Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai 9780674063174

Citation preview

CHUR CH MIL ITA NT

CHUR CH MIL ITA NT B I S HOP KUNG A ND C ATHOL IC R E S I S TA NCE IN COMMUNIST SHANGHAI

Paul P. Mariani

H A R VA R D UNI V E R S IT Y PR E S S

Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2011

Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mariani, Paul Philip. Church militant : Bishop Kung and Catholic resistance in Communist Shanghai / Paul P. Mariani. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978–0-674–06153–8 1. Gong, Pinmei, 1901–2000. 2. Communism and Christianity—China— Shanghai—History—20th century. 3. Communism and Christianity— Catholic Church—History—20th century. 4. Catholic Church—China—Shanghai— History—20th century. 5. Shanghai (China)—Church history—20th century. I. Title. BX1667.S53M37 2011 282'.5113209045—dc22 2011007460

For my parents

CONTENTS

Preface

ix

Note on Romanization Map

xiii

xiv

Introduction

1

1 The Lines Are Drawn

27

2 Targeted Attack

68

3 Arrests and Expulsions

109

4 Assault

143

5 Final Operations

169

Epilogue

206

A Note on Sources Notes

235

Bibliography Index

265

275

vii

231

P R E FAC E

In retrospect, the genesis of my fascination with the dramatic story recounted in these pages took place in 1995, the year I met Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pinmei for the fi rst and last time. Through the help of his relatives and friends, I was able to visit Kung—then ninety-three years old—at a home for retired clergy in Connecticut. We could barely communicate directly with each other. The cardinal protested that he did not understand the “northern dialect” of Mandarin. He also knew little English. He did, however, know Shanghaiese, French, and Latin, a result of his long seminary formation in his native Shanghai. I was struck by the bearing of this rather diminutive man who, as Shanghai’s fi rst Chinese bishop, had spent almost thirty years in Shanghai’s Ward Road Jail. During the visit, Kung’s main concern was to hear news about his priests who were still in China. Of his own long period of suffering, he said nothing. This was no accident. In fact, for years family and friends prodded him to give an account of his experiences. It was to no avail. “God knows what happened,” he would say. “There is no need for anything more.” But others differed. Some felt Kung’s testimony would shed light on religious policy in the early People’s Republic of China. Others felt it was imperative to record an important recent confrontation between church and state. Nearly ten years passed, and I was once again drawn back to learn more about this history. This book is the result. This study is a history of a local Chinese community during a rather short—albeit historically charged—period of time. By showing the Shanghai Catholic community’s resistance to CCP religious policy in the 1950s, I have tried to give a “more differentiated, more contoured understanding,” in Paul A. Cohen’s words, of a particular community so as to shed light on China as a whole during these important years. As such, ix

P R E FA C E

I hope this book will be more than a simple denominational account of the Shanghai Catholic community. I hope it will challenge readers to look for similarities and differences in how a wide range of local groups and communities—whether social, ethnic, cultural, economic, or religious—responded to the CCP’s consolidation of power after 1949. In addition, this study tries to avoid being another mission history, focusing on a select group of foreigners in an alien land. It also attempts to avoid the trope of portraying an idealized local church somehow purged of “imperialist” elements. History is not so tidy. Rather, by using the extant sources—whether Chinese, French, or English—this history aims to capture the Shanghai Catholic Church of the 1950s as it was: an increasingly Chinese church that had benefited from foreign money and personnel and still strived to maintain its links with the universal church but which—in the face of mounting state pressure—was rapidly being forced to rely on its own indigenous resources. In researching and writing this story, I have relied on the good will and solicitude of many people. I owe a debt of gratitude to my advisors at the University of Chicago: fi rst to Guy Alitto, and also to Prasenjit Duara and Catherine Brekus. I also wish to thank the following archivists and librarians: Dan Peterson of the Jesuit California Province Archives in Santa Clara; Luis Cerezo of the Jesuit China Province Archives in Taipei; Xiaoxin Wu of the Ricci Institute in San Francisco; Michael Walsh of the Maryknoll Archives in Maryknoll, New York; and the staff of the Shanghai Municipal Archives and Shanghai Library. I am thankful for the gracious assistance of Anthony and Amanda Clark, Joseph Tse-hei Lee, Richard Madsen, and Daniel Bays. I am also grateful to my colleagues and friends Jerry McKevitt, Barbara Molony, Bob Senkewicz, Eric Hanson, Liam Brockey, Stephen Halsey, and Mike Hickey. I am also grateful to those who helped in the nuances of translation: Mark Doherty, Sun Jili, and Wang Fei-hsien; to my fellow Jesuits: Michael Engh, John McGarry, Tom Smolich, Matthew Carnes, Jeremy Clarke, William O’Brien, Robert Stephan, and Ken Hughes; and to my editors: Kathleen McDermott and Sophia Khan. I also want to thank those with personal knowledge of the events recounted in this book: Margaret and Ignatius Chu, Matthew Chu, Matthew Koo, Shen Baoyi, Louis Jin Luxian, Walter McCarthy, and Mary Jo Reynolds. Several travel grants from the University of Chicago allowed me to do research in China in 2006, and additional grants from Santa Clara University, including Franzia Family funds, helped me to x

P R E FA C E

return in 2010. I would also like to thank the following Jesuit communities: Woodlawn Jesuit in Chicago, where I did the bulk of my work, Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, Tien Educational Center in Taipei, and Ricci Hall in Hong Kong. In particular, I would like to thank my own Santa Clara Jesuit community. Most especially, I would like to thank my parents for their unstinting support, love, and gift of faith. They will immediately recognize— despite distance of time and space—the church described in these pages as being the church of their youth.

xi

NOTE ON R OM A NI Z ATION

In this book, I have mainly used the pinyin romanization now current in the People’s Republic of China. In some cases, I have used the older form of romanization when it is more recognizable. One such example is Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei’s name. It should be Gong Pinmei in pinyin, but it is far more common to use the former spelling. In addition, I have standardized many names mentioned in this book. The same name was often written several ways in the sources, depending on whether it was rendered into one of several Mandarin spellings, the Shanghai dialect, ecclesiastical Latin, or American English. For example, the person who appears in the older documents as Aloysius Chin (Kien), or even Louis King, is now referred to as Louis Jin Luxian. For Shanghai Catholics, I have usually placed the baptismal name in front of the full Chinese name. Finally, regarding the mission magazines and church news reports, I have occasionally regularized the spellings, corrected a few misspellings, and added punctuation marks to some of the texts. Often written in great haste in Shanghai and Hong Kong, these magazines would mix a variety of English and American usages, often within the same article.

xiii

31

Yueyang

South Rd

Rd

Middle

11

Xian g

Jianguo R

X ujia h ui Rd Xietu

Rd

Dapu

Wanping Rd South

Key institutions of Catholic Shanghai, circa 1950.

d

West

Rd

Nandan Rd East

Rd (N o.1)

chang Nan

yang

Rd

18 Jianguo

Taiyuan

Rd

Yongjia

Rd

Gao’an

Wulumuqi

Wanping

Rd

South

Rd

Rd

Rd

Ruijin

Rd ng

Road i

5

Rd (No.2 )

Hua sha n

Rd an g W uk

Rd

H ua s h a n

Tianping

an sh ng He

g jiaban Zhao Tia yaoqiao Rd n

29 30

22

Yuqing Rd

Xingguo Rd

Rd g qiao Rd 21 20 23 24 25 Rd 26 27 28

Cao xi

H on

ing

Rd

19

a aih Hu

We st

Do Xinle ng hu 7 Rd

Chang le

Ruijin

Rd ou n gs h

C ha

Rd Jiangsu

Rd

Pa

ny u

Kangp

Rd

Rd

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Yan

Rd

qi

Fuxing

Rd

Rd

West

Rd

n

Rd

xing Wu

32

Rd

xin g

Rd

South

32 Sheshan (Zosé) Basilica Tai’an

Rd

31 Carmelite Convent

Fu

nxi Shaa

Wuyu a

30 Tushanwan (Tousewe) Orphanage

ai Huaih

Anfu

Rd Middle

29 Major Seminary

Rd

Rd N.

28 Minor Seminary

Rd

Rd

Xiangyang

27 Normal School

Julu Wulumuqi

26 Observatory

Weihai

Road

Yan’an

Rd

25 St. Ignatius Church

Rd

Ya

24 Xujiahui Library (Bibliotheca Zikawei)

n’an

Rd

North

22 Shengmuyuan Orphanage

We st

Road

Nanjing

Rd

Rd

21 Jesuit School of Theology

North

Yuyuan

20 St. Ignatius High School

West

Rd

Beijing

Changde

Rd

ad Ro

19 Good Shepherd Convent

uqi lum Wu

Rd

18 Catholic Central Bureau

23 Bureau of Sinology

Rd

Hua sha n

su

17 St. Joseph Hospice

Rd

Rd

Rd

ng

16 Little Sisters of the Poor

Rd

ha Xinz

Jia

15 St. Francis Xavier Cathedral

gf u an Gu ou zh su Xi Rd

Wuding Rd

14 St. Joseph Church

Rd

ning

Kangding

13 Franco-Chinese School

g Jian

Rd

12 Maison Centrale of the Sisters of Charity

nxi

in g

a Sha

10 Heude Museum of Natural History

Rd

Changping ng ka Xi

Kangd

Jiaozho u

9 Aurora University 11 St. Mary’s Hospital

4

yao Yu

Rd

H aifang

Rd

7 St. Joan of Arc High School

Rd

Xinfeng

Rd

Changde

6 Aurora Women’s College

ghu a

Rd

ua n

Rd Chan g gnin Jian orth d N i R anx

An y

Rd

Sha

3 St. Theresa Church 4 Gonzaga High School and St. Aloysius Church 5 Christ the King Church

8 St. Peter’s Church

Rd

gshou an Ch ui Xinh

2 St. Francis Xavier High School

d an g R Xik

1 Sacred Heart Church

Em ei Rd Rd

Rd

xun

Nan

Rd

Rd Sichua n

Daming

ng

Da mi

d

iu R Hu q

1 Rd

ng Dongcha

14

t Eas

Zhongshan Rd

N

an gp

u

n

i z a n g Rd South

Rd

E as t

CI T Y

X

Rd Chongq ing

Rd

Sinan

ng

r

Rd

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Hefei

East

OL D

t

10

Rd

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8

F uxing

Ri

Rd

Rd

12

9 Jianguo Rd East

0

15

17

Rd 500 m

Zh

Rd

0

Rd

Rd

zhan

Xietu

ang

an

Rd

Nanche

Lujiab

S o ut h

Rd

X ujiahui

gs on

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1/2 mile

16

h

Rd

M.

zhi Rd

Rd

S

Rd

Road

i Huaiha

hi gz an

W

ha ngs Zho

13

East

Rd

g Jinglin in Renm

Mi ddle

Middle

Rd Zhejiang

d

R o ad

Rd

Rd

Guang d o ng R d

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6

Rd

Rd

Sichuan Rd

Road

u ngd

Fuzhou

Rd

Hu

Che

u R d

Ya n

Jiujiang Hankou

ng

2

Rd

Roa d

Nanjing

iddle Rd M

Race Course

Rd

Tianjin

Henan Rd

Rd

t es

East

Ningbo

R Hub ei

j i ng

Rd

Rd

ny a

Ha

Ch

zhou nsu Na

Rd

Rd

Beijing

Xizang

Na n

W

Che

Rd

Xizang Rd Middle

Rd n gdu

West

Xiamen

Rd

g nton

Rd

Rd

Rd

Tia

R d

Rd

Beijing

Tangg u

Rd

un Nanx

n Datia

3

aiguan S ha n h

Dag

Beisuzhou Nansuzhou

Rd

zha Xin

Rd

R Rd d

Zhapu

Hai ning gfu an hou Gu isuz X

g Hainin

Wuso ng Rd

N o r th

ast Rd E u Tianm

m

a

E

INTRODUCTION

If we renounce our faith, we will disappear and there will not be a resurrection. If we are faithful, we will still disappear, but there will be a resurrection. Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei

Late on the evening of September 8, 1955, the day the Catholic Church traditionally celebrates the birth of Mary, Mother of God, public security officers arrested and held for interrogation Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei of Shanghai, the most influential churchman still free in China and one of its few Catholic bishops not already either exiled or imprisoned. In simultaneous attacks throughout the darkened city, police raided local seminaries, churches, and even private dwellings. On that night alone, more than three hundred Catholics from the bishop to high school students were handcuffed, thrown into police vans, and driven to increasingly overcrowded prisons. By the end of the month, 1,200 Shanghai Catholics had been incarcerated. Their crime, they were informed, was not that they were Catholics. After all, the Chinese Constitution had enshrined religious freedom as a basic right. Rather, they were being detained as counterrevolutionaries “hiding under the cloak of religion,” a phrase used repeatedly in the press. But the prisoners themselves, these so-called Catholic “militants,” knew their real offense was that neither they nor their bishop would renounce the pope, the source of unity for the church. These were the nonnegotiable demands for membership in a universal, supranational, and indivisible church. “If today I renounce the pope,” they argued, “then tomorrow I might be asked to deny the Lord himself.”1 Most were given a choice. If they signed incriminating documents, they would be temporarily set free. If they did not, they would be punished for supporting the “Kung Pinmei traitorous counterrevolutionary clique” and labeled as enemies of the state. 1

C H U R C H M I L I TA N T

Why was there such a tragic clash between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Shanghai Catholic community? In their own words, two armies squared off in “combat.” On one side were dedicated Communist cadres committed to their vision of a Socialist paradise and a newly resurgent China, a China that had proudly stood up against both internal enemies and foreign aggression. On the other side were equally patriotic and idealistic Chinese Catholics who resented the increasing infringement on their religious liberties. In the ensuing conflict, Catholics soon learned that the atheistic regime demanded a high price for being both Chinese and Catholic. Ultimately, many of these Shanghai Catholics were sent to labor camps, not to be released until 1979, when they returned to Shanghai as broken old men and women. With the addition of recently declassified “top-secret” CCP documents, this tragic episode in modern Chinese history can fi nally be told. If we understand how the CCP dealt with the Shanghai Catholic community in the 1950s, we will better understand the current predicament of the Catholic Church in China. Yet, the aim of the story is even broader. It helps to illuminate the fate of other religious groups both past and present—Tibetan Buddhists, Muslims, and Evangelical Christians—in a China that is ever more a power on the world stage. Indeed, this book raises perennial questions of state intervention, religious liberty, and freedom of conscience.

Communist Power When the CCP emerged victorious from the long Chinese civil war in 1949, its first order of business was to consolidate power. It was a difficult task, not least because the nation was “fragmented, public order and morale had decayed, a war-torn economy suffered from severe inflation and unemployment, and China’s fundamental economic and military backwardness created monumental impediments” to national reconstruction.2 Yet, in its revolutionary project, the CCP did not simply aim to consolidate power; it wanted to form subjects loyal to the state alone. Achieving such deep state penetration was, of course, a bold project, and something never before achieved to such an extent in Chinese history. Dedicated CCP cadres set about awakening the masses from their “false awareness” and setting them on the true path of Socialism. They had defeated the powerful Nationalist (KMT) army, after all, and now was the time for action. 2

INTRODUCTION

To begin with, the CCP would need to subjugate any groups that stood in its way. One such group ultimately labeled “counterrevolutionary” was the Catholic Church. But a direct assault on the church could wait while the CCP confronted what it perceived as far greater threats. First, it had to break the power of armed resistance from bandits (which in the early 1950s Mao himself estimated at four hundred thousand nationwide), secret societies, ethnic and religious groups, and former Nationalist army units.3 By mid-1951, Mao was successful: except for some pockets of Uighur secessionists and Tibetan insurgents who continued to fight on, armed resistance had largely been eliminated. With most armed resistance effectively crushed, the CCP then concentrated on subjugating “enemies without guns.”4 Citizens quickly learned the new regime meant business. Within the fi rst few years of the Communist victory, prostitutes, pickpockets, and opium addicts were rounded up and sent to reform camps. There were other groups to contend with as well: democratic parties, intellectuals, workers, small businessmen, and KMT spies and sympathizers. In Shanghai, resistance to the CCP was largely passive and disorganized: independents agitated for a fully democratic system, moneychangers ignored CCP directives, and some harassed capitalists fled the country or were driven to suicide. From time to time resistance became more active and organized. There was sporadic labor unrest, and protests over the closing of movie theaters occurred. But why did the CCP consider the Shanghai Catholic community its enemy? After all, some of the city’s most outstanding citizens were Catholics, and though few of them sympathized with the Communist cause, they were still patriots who could have used their considerable resources for the sake of national reconstruction. The answer seems to be that, when the CCP dealt with the Shanghai Catholic community, as with any non-Communist group, it had two choices. One was to remain tolerant of them or even reconcile with them for the good of the country. The other was to hasten a Communist utopia, even as it settled what it considered to be old scores. In dealing with the Catholic Church, the regime ultimately chose the latter. There were two major reasons for this. First, Marxists were atheists who wished to liberate their compatriots from the idols of their own making. The world, they argued, was locked in an epic struggle between the forces of theism and atheism. “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” Karl Marx had told them, borrowing a phrase from Charles Kingsley, 3

C H U R C H M I L I TA N T

and Friedrich Engels had warned that religion was nothing more than “the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life.”5 Second, playing the nationalist card, the CCP knew the growth of Catholicism in China was a mixed legacy. True, Christianity had ancient roots in Chinese soil, but Chinese Christians had too often been protected by foreign powers in the past. For these reasons, the CCP would come to see the Roman Catholic Church as “a reactionary organization, the source of counter-revolutionary activities in the midst of the People’s Democracies.”6 In short, the Catholic Church was blocking the progress of world Communism. What, then, was the regime’s goal for the Catholic Church? There are two schools of thought.7 One school contends that the regime simply wanted to control the church. If this was the case, then the regime’s goals seem reasonable enough. According to this school, CCP goals were similar to previous Chinese regimes, going as far back as China’s distant past. For Chinese emperors had long commanded both political and religious authority, and they alone decided which sects or religions they would tolerate and which they would persecute.8 This school of thought also holds that CCP goals were similar to that of many other governments. The other school of thought holds that the regime ultimately wanted to destroy the Catholic Church, thus surpassing the efforts of previous Chinese regimes. Whereas previous regimes might tolerate minority religions for a while, the CCP itself exalted Communism as a religion in its own right. It wished to propagate its own antireligion of atheistic materialism. In fact, Mao Zedong had a zeal for converts. After all, if he simply liquidated his enemies, he would tacitly be admitting defeat. But if he could reeducate and remold the people, this was proof of the righteousness of his cause. In fact, at its core, there was a “powerfully religious character” to Maoism.9 If this school of thought is correct, then the nature of the debate fundamentally changes. It makes clear the unbridled confidence with which Mao ruled China during the Socialist “high tide,” the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It also explains why a compromise between church and state could not be reached. Finally, it explains the ferocity of the regime’s assertion of its will, and the ferocity of Catholic resistance to that will. So what did the regime want? Party documents answer the question. By 1959, the CCP would tacitly admit that, once the regime was strong enough, it would actually destroy the church: 4

INTRODUCTION

When the political struggle and the forces of production have reached a high rate in the development of their forces, then it will become possible to destroy the Catholic Church. This is the objective we aim to reach and it is for this that we struggle.10 The CCP’s ultimate goal, then, was clear. The goal of Shanghai Catholics was also clear: to fight for survival whatever the cost. In fact, as the church became increasingly marginalized, it resorted to new methods that would help ensure its survival: the “weapons of the weak.”11 The regime’s fi nal goal was clear enough. But how would the party achieve its objective? The CCP had perfected two strategies in dealing with recalcitrant groups: co-option and—failing that—force. The CCP generally favored co-option, as force was often counterproductive. Co-option was the centerpiece of the so-called united front strategy, which Mao ultimately described as one of the three special weapons— along with the party and the army—with which he defeated his enemies. The united front strategy called on the party to ally itself with the “revolutionary masses,” non-Communist groups such as trade unions, democratic parties, religious associations, and even—for a time—the Nationalists, in order to achieve common goals. Some non-Communists saw this strategy as a cynical ploy whereby the regime would divide and conquer its enemies, one by one. A temporary peace might be won for collaborating groups, but for those that continued to resist, the CCP would bring to bear the blunt instruments of state power: propaganda, surveillance, harassment, “brainwashing,” and force—often overwhelming and brutal force. It would be a travesty to suggest that the small Shanghai Catholic community was an even match for the formidable CCP. The CCP— founded in Shanghai itself in 1921—had nearly thirty years of struggle experience, something about which it was justifiably proud. During this time, it had learned how to function both overtly and covertly.12 Most important, it had proven itself capable of decisively infiltrating and cracking enemy organizations. It knew how to penetrate them, how to divide them against themselves, and how to subjugate them. Yet in 1949, at the beginning of the conflict, the two sides were more evenly matched than one might imagine. There were only eight thousand underground cadres in Shanghai on the eve of its liberation, and their hold over the city was at best tenuous.13 If the CCP was too bold in carrying out its goals, of course, then it might antagonize groups that it could use for the 5

C H U R C H M I L I TA N T

time being. Further, the party itself would later recognize the church’s strength: it was “neither barren nor powerless.”14 Several fundamental questions are in order. First: why would the Shanghai Catholic community chance a fight with the mighty regime? In short, they fought for their survival. Individual Catholics might bend to the regime to ensure their own personal survival, but for the church as a body to survive, Catholics needed to remain unified—unified with each other, with the bishop, and with the pope. The second question is more interesting. How were Shanghai Catholics able to resist encroaching Communist power for so long? How were they able to succeed where so many other groups had failed? Soon enough the CCP found that its every strategy of control was countered by a Catholic strategy of resistance. The church proved adaptable. At fi rst it operated in the open, but as state pressure mounted it became ever more clandestine, even to the point of mirroring strategies once used by the previously underground CCP. It was not long before the former guerrilla fighters of the CCP recognized that the tactics and techniques they had perfected—barring violence—were now being used against themselves: cell groups with strict discipline and group cohesion, compartmentalized knowledge, a hierarchical organization, mass mobilization, multifaceted public pressure campaigns, intelligence gathering, and a specially trained vanguard of militants. The Shanghai Catholic community was repaying the CCP in its own currency. Some of this news might come as a surprise. In fact, much of the regnant historiography on the early years of the People’s Republic of China has held that, at least in urban areas, organized resistance to the CCP had been suppressed by mid-1952.15 It has held that by then non-Communist groups had been co-opted, coerced, or crushed. The story, then, has remained one of successful regime consolidation, not one of successful resistance to the new regime. However, beginning with an article by Elizabeth Perry on Shanghai’s 1957 strike wave, scholars have started to question the conventional wisdom.16 This work continues the new trend, for now we have a group that resisted CCP policies, year in and year out, more consistently and for much longer than perhaps any other known group. In fact, after seven years of trying to destroy the Shanghai Catholic community, the CCP was forced to pay it begrudging respect: The enemy has a lot of struggle experience. They use secret and public, legal and illegal, combat methods to deal with us. They also use the special characteristics of the Catholic religion and its 6

INTRODUCTION

organization to strictly control believers and gain the blind confidence of the people.17 What, then, were the secrets of the Catholic Church’s success? What were its “combat methods” and “special characteristics”? And what methods did the CCP, a master at defeating enemy organizations, use to fi nally crush that resistance? This book seeks to answer these questions.

Development of the Catholic Community in the Shanghai Region: 1608–1948 One of the “special characteristics of the Catholic religion” in the Shanghai region was its long history.18 For by the middle of the twentieth century, the church had become an indigenous reality with roots deeper and a history far longer than the CCP. The community traced its origins back to Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), the famed Jesuit missionary, who has long been known for his eighteenyear attempt to bring Christianity to the emperor.19 Recently, however, more attention is being paid to his legacy of bringing to life Christian communities far from Beijing where the majority of “court Jesuits” would eventually labor.20 The best known of these communities are in the Jiangnan region (the coastal region just south of the Yangtze River), the region in which Shanghai would ultimately become the premier city. When Ricci accommodated the Christian message to the sensibilities of China’s elite—learning classical Chinese and taking the garb of a Confucian scholar—he soon attracted converts.21 The most prominent among them was Paul Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), who later became the Grand Secretary to the emperor and a member of the prestigious Hanlin Academy. Xu was baptized in Nanjing in 1603. A few years later, he even made the thirty-day spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola as detailed in the book with the same title. When Xu Guangqi’s father died in 1608, Xu returned to Shanghai for the traditional three-year period of mourning. As Ricci himself could not leave Beijing, he directed a fellow Italian Jesuit, Lazzaro Cattaneo, to minister to Xu and his family. The Jesuits would soon establish a permanent residence in Shanghai, but the nascent community would always trace its origin to Xu’s 1608 return. The Shanghai region would show its promise early. Already in 1609, Xu—never a tepid apostle—presented sixty candidates for baptism to the Jesuits. In 1637, Shanghai Catholics began building their fi rst 7

C H U R C H M I L I TA N T

church—in a Chinese style, no less—within the walls of the old Chinese city. Although the records are sparse, by 1663 Shanghai boasted forty thousand Christians. Some of them were quite zealous. Xu’s own granddaughter, Candida Xu (1607–1680), founded more than thirty churches throughout the country and established a cemetery for Jesuits in Shanghai. By 1703, Shanghai had two churches and thirty chapels staffed by four Jesuits. In time, Shanghai would “account for over a third of all Chinese converts.”22 In fact, the Xu family compound itself—Xujiahui (Zikawei in the Shanghai dialect), located at the western edge of the city—would in time become a mini-Christendom in the heart of Asia. It was an auspicious start. But it was not to continue. Problems threatened on all sides. Priests from other Catholic religious orders—namely Dominicans and Franciscans—soon took issue with the Jesuit policy of missionary adaptation. They thought Jesuits were watering down the faith by wearing Chinese garb, rendering sacred texts into classical Chinese, and—most egregious of all—allowing the requisite Chinese veneration of ancestors and of Confucius. In 1643, a Dominican went to Rome with “doubtful questions” about these practices, and the Chinese Rites controversy was born. After nearly sixty years of contradictory decisions from Rome, the rites were definitively condemned in 1704. Emperor Kangxi was enraged, and he expelled the papal delegate. Missionaries now had to obtain an official license to remain in China. Some missionaries applied for this license. Others refused and were forced to minister clandestinely in the provinces. Kangxi’s son Yongzheng was even harsher. In 1724, he reversed his father’s 1692 Edict of Toleration. Christianity was officially banned in China, although some Jesuits were permitted to remain in Beijing as civil servants. The hope was that—through their service—these Jesuits would take imperial pressure off fellow priests who continued to work without government authorization. It was a difficult time for Catholics in the Shanghai region as well. At Xujiahui, some of Xu Guangqi’s progeny, “having renounced their rank to practice their faith, lived in poverty near the tombs of their ancestors.”23 Other problems—again often originating in Europe—soon hampered the mission effort. The Jesuit order itself was suppressed in 1773, and the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars further battered the church. As a result, the church in Europe went into steep decline, few missionaries set out from Europe, and Catholic missions worldwide fell into desuetude. They would not revive for another fi fty years. 8

INTRODUCTION

The result in the Shanghai region was mixed. A positive development was that with fewer priests, local Christians were forced to fend for themselves. The miracle was that the communities survived even the most brutal persecutions. They survived—in short—because they developed indigenous structures.24 One such structure was the Catholic clan. These extended kinship networks formed councils that managed church lands and fi nances and arranged clandestine visits by their priests—whether Chinese or foreign.25 Wealthy clan members worshipped in their private chapels. They also bribed local officials and tried—as best they could— to keep alive contact with the universal church. 26 In fact, these local lay leaders (huizhang) were often more effective than the missionaries, who were not as well versed in the local language and culture. Another indigenous development that, no doubt, grew out of these strong Catholic families were the “virgins”—single women who consecrated their lives in service to the church. In a society where unmarried women were stigmatized, the virgins played a key role in church life as they “cared for the chapels, many of which they themselves had built, undertook the religious instruction of Christian children, led the prayers at mass and other services, and supported itinerant clergymen, including the Jesuits.”27 In addition, the virgins lived with their families or in small communities, and they even adopted young girls to carry on their work. 28 Relying on indigenous resources was largely a positive development. A certain rhythm of Christian life was established, and Catholic communities perdured. Yet there were negative developments as well, which threatened to become the norm. Local communities were institutionally weak, isolated from one other, and—at times—cut off from the universal church. As doctrinal inconsistencies crept in, it was feared that Catholicism might simply meld into the general Chinese religious ethos or become yet another folk religion.29 The Catholic communities were also vulnerable: persecution might extinguish the community altogether. For these reasons, Chinese Christians yearned for free religious expression and the direct pastoral care of priests—both missionary and Chinese. Their prayers were answered. By 1815, the Jesuits were restored. In fact, the restoration both animated and coincided with the “Catholic revival” then spreading throughout post-Napoleonic Europe. Catholic missionary efforts were revivified worldwide—as it were—from their ashes. Hearing about the newly restored Jesuits, Shanghai Catholics repeatedly requested that Monsignor Louis-Marie de Besi, administrator 9

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(later bishop) of Nanjing, petition Rome to send some of these Jesuits to China.30 Shanghai Catholics fondly remembered the legacy of the preSuppression Jesuits. The bishop—for his part—needed far more priests to minister to his flock. In 1842, three French Jesuits arrived near Shanghai. They were edified to fi nd that the Catholic communities had survived the long period of persecution and neglect. But, in the interim, the world had changed. For these Jesuits arrived just a month after the British defeated the Chinese in the Opium War. The ensuing Treaty of Nanjing—traumatic for the Chinese—forced them to open five treaty ports, Shanghai among them, to foreign influence. The power dynamics between China and the West had completely reversed. China would now have to yield to burgeoning Western power. There were major implications for the Jesuit mission in the Shanghai region. First, Catholics now had to share the mission field with Protestant missionaries, largely from Great Britain and increasingly from the United States. Second, and more important, if Portuguese power had been preeminent in the earlier Catholic mission efforts, it was now France’s hour to shine, for it soon took on the role of being protector of Catholic missions in China. The French government wanted the missionaries to contribute to its own “civilizing mission” in China. Thus, French church and state worked together closely. To this end, by 1846, France signed a treaty with the emperor that allowed Chinese citizens to profess Catholicism. The treaty “also ordered the restitution of previously confiscated church proprieties and the punishment of local officials who persecuted Catholics.”31 To this treaty was appended—but only in the Chinese version—the stipulation that Catholic missionaries now had “the freedom to purchase land in all provinces” and were “free to construct churches.”32 In addition, the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin revoked all remaining anti-Christian legislation. For the time being, the French even exercised their protectorate with the tacit permission of the Vatican. At Vatican Council I (1869–1870) the vicars apostolic of China—not one of them Chinese—voted for the following: continued French protection, opposition to a native Chinese hierarchy, and no ambassador from the Vatican to China.33 The sum result was that within twenty years, France—as protector of Catholic missions in China—made sure the Chinese legalized Christianity, restored church properties, and allowed missionaries access to the whole country. These new developments also had a direct effect in the Shanghai region itself. Already by 1843, French Jesuits staffed the mission, 10

INTRODUCTION

although they still technically worked under Bishop Louis-Marie de Besi.34 The confusing arrangement only led to problems, for as the Jesuits increased in number, Bishop de Besi disagreed with them on two major points: money and men. First, he wanted to appropriate all money sent to the Jesuit mission. Second, he wanted to make the Jesuits themselves into his own diocesan priests; they were to keep their distinct Jesuit rule of life only interiorly. This was a tall order for religious order priests. “‘The Jesuits have not come to Jiangnan as Jesuits but as missionaries,’ de Besi stated.” “A Jesuit is a Jesuit before being a missionary,” countered the Jesuit provincial.35 The irony was that the Jesuits had clashed with the very person who had invited them back. With both issues, the integrity of the Jesuit mission was at stake. For the Jesuits, the only remedy was to name their own bishop for the region. Rome responded—in 1856—by dividing the massive Diocese of Nanjing into five smaller regions. One of them was the vicariate apostolic of Jiangnan.36 It was centered in Nanjing but included Shanghai and the surrounding areas.37 The Jesuits of the Paris Province now staffed the vast mission and governed it as well. The French Jesuits then set out to impose centralized structures and regularize Catholic life in the region. It was a delicate balancing act. The Jesuits wanted to affi rm time-tested indigenous structures, but they also wanted to bring them into line with current church law and practice. The Jesuits had to negotiate carefully. Even so, the process led to inevitable misunderstandings with the Chinese clergy, the virgins, and the clan councils. First, regarding the Chinese clergy, the Jesuits demanded that they live in Jesuit communities and obey Jesuit rules and regulations. 38 In fact, missionary largesse soon threatened to overwhelm local structures. Already by 1854, the number of foreign priests in China as a whole surpassed the number of Chinese priests. 39 Chinese priests risked being crowded out of their own church and relegated to second-class status. Second, the Jesuits asserted control over the clan councils. With the decree of 1846, the Jesuits had permission to regain long-lost church properties. It was a thorny issue as some of these properties had never been owned by the pre-Suppression Jesuits. At any rate, the clan councils had administered these church properties in the interim. The Jesuits now wanted them under their control. Third, perhaps the most difficult conflict took place with the consecrated virgins. They operated out of the normal ecclesiastical structures: they were not governed by church 11

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law, had not received much official religious formation, and often did not live in community. Yet because their power was not tied to land ownership, they were harder to control.40 The Jesuits wanted to limit their role in church affairs and bring them under closer ecclesiastical oversight. Finally, by 1867 the Jesuits had French sisters from the Helpers of the Holy Souls direct the virgins. The virgins were to be trained in the “perfect” way of life in a vowed religious community.41 Thus began the Presentandines, a native Chinese congregation of virgins, but which was under French supervision. At its worst, some of this history looks only like ecclesiastical colonialism. The reality is more complex, for at its best, the Catholic community now benefited from harnessing its indigenous structures to global Catholic power. As a result, the Jiangnan mission grew by leaps and bounds. How could it not with the permissive treaties, the subjugation and rationalization of indigenous structures, the unimpeded flow of men and money from the global church, and the receptivity of many Chinese? Further, despite occasional attacks in the surrounding regions, Shanghai was under the protection of foreign gunboats, and so avoided the worst excesses of rebellion and anti-Christian violence. Despite these periodic upheavals, the years from 1842 to 1937 were largely a time of peace and stability for the church in Shanghai—a pax Catholica. As a result, the church went on a hundred-year construction boom. Catholic institutional growth was centered in Xujiahui and radiated outward—like spokes on a wheel—to churches and mission stations throughout Shanghai and the rest of the region. It began when the Jesuits obtained their land at Xujiahui by purchases from the Xu family, by direct donation, and by restitution from the Chinese government. It was there that they fi rst constructed a chapel (c.1842), a residence (1847), Immaculate Conception Church (1847), an orphanage at Tushanwan (1849), St. Ignatius High School (1850), and a minor seminary (1852). They also built—in the Dongjiadu section of Shanghai—the Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier (1852).42 In the midst of the boom, the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864) began to sweep through southern China. The Taipings were a pseudo-Christian group with Evangelical Protestant roots. Friendly at fi rst, the Taiping soon attacked Catholic villages throughout Jiangnan. Refugees poured into Shanghai.43 The Taiping were eventually crushed, but their unintended legacy was that Catholics were now a stronger presence than ever in Shanghai. Jiangnan’s loss was Catholic Shanghai’s gain. 12

INTRODUCTION

Anti-Christian riots occasionally flared up in the lower Yangtze from 1869 to 1875, but Shanghai was largely unscathed. Further, after anti-Christian violence, Western nations demanded reparations. At the end of the day, these reparations, European contributions, and profit from real estate all fueled the continued construction boom. Thus, in Shanghai, an observatory was built (1871), St. Francis Xavier High School was constructed (1872), and the Carmelite Sisters established a foundation (1874).44 By 1900, the condition of the Catholic Church in the country as a whole was rather robust; its population had grown to seven hundred thousand, a sevenfold increase in the course of the nineteenth century. There were nine hundred foreign male missionaries and 470 Chinese priests. Then came the Boxer Rebellion in the same year which ravaged churches in northern China: over thirty thousand Christians (both Catholic and Protestant), five bishops, forty priests, and many religious sisters were killed. Yet Shanghai and the rest of the south was largely unscathed. The rebellion was crushed, and the church rebounded quickly. Once again, the church was surviving persecution and thriving in peacetime. The church in Shanghai then experienced another surge of growth and prosperity. From 1900 to 1930, the Jesuit vicar apostolic of Shanghai was—aptly named—Prosper Paris. And the mission did prosper. The Jesuits continued to fi nance more churches and schools, brought over more French nuns, and schooled the faithful in an uncompromising French Catholicism. In 1909, they built the largest school of theology in China, and the next year the imposing French Gothic St. Ignatius Church—one of the largest in Asia—was completed. The following years brought the construction of Aurora preparatory school (1917), St. Louis Normal School (1921), the major seminary (1928), St. Theresa Church (1930), and Good Shepherd Convent (1933).45 By this time talented local Chinese Catholics were—once again— beginning to make their impact felt on the church as well. Case in point: Ma Xiangbo (1840–1939). Ma was a gifted scholar from a famous Catholic family. In 1870, he became a Jesuit and was ordained a priest. In 1903, Ma helped to establish Aurora (Zhendan) University, the first Catholic university in China. Classes were taught in French, just one of the issues over which Ma eventually clashed with fellow Jesuits. Embittered, Ma ultimately left the Jesuits, although he remained a Catholic. In time, he founded Fudan University, which instructed in Chinese. His goals were outlined in university’s very name—Fudan—“Zhendan Revived.” 13

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Another great Chinese benefactor of the church was Joseph Lo Pahong (Lu Baihong) (1875–1937), the “Rockefeller of China.”46 Although the great majority of Catholics were poor or part of the emerging middle classes, the Lo (Lu) family made its fortune in shipbuilding and textiles. It traced its Catholic roots to 1620, when Xu Guangqi himself baptized a member of the Lo clan. Lo—the self-described “machine of God”—was not always known for his piety. In fact, as a youth he was somewhat dissolute. A Jesuit teacher sensed his ennui and encouraged him to take heart. After a period of suffering, Lo experienced a profound conversion, a conversion that would pay off handsomely for the church. Lo soon established and made himself president of the Chinese branch of Catholic Action, a charitable association of laypeople. He was exceedingly generous with his own money. He fi nanced at least five hospitals and two colleges.47 Lo was also a colorful character. He told others that he wore dark sunglasses to protect his marital chastity. He also carried a bottle of holy water wherever he went. In this way, he ended up baptizing thousands of people, often those sick or on their deathbeds. Lo was also responsible for bringing California Jesuits to Shanghai by ultimately appealing directly to Pope Pius XI himself.48 Lo needed native English speakers to instruct students in the new commercial language. American Jesuits would serve nicely in this capacity. Lo’s life does not have a happy ending. On December 30, 1937, an assassin, most likely an ultranationalist who thought Lo had collaborated too closely with the Japanese to protect his business interests, gunned him down.49 There were other rapid developments as well, for at this point French Catholic power—a constant in most of this narrative—began to be challenged. First, even the Vatican was beginning to see the French Protectorate more as a liability than an asset. It had lost control of the China mission. To rectify the situation, several popes tried to establish direct diplomatic relations with China. They failed. Second, France itself was changing. With the Separation Act of 1905, France became a secular nation and stripped the church of its privileges. Third, World War I dealt France a crushing blow. Many French missionaries were recalled to Europe. Although many returned to China, the French would never fully regain their dominance over the church. An increasing number of Irish, Canadian, and American priests came to Shanghai to replenish the ranks. By this time, Asian nationalism was also on the rise. Asians were tired of being colonized or semicolonized. In China, Han nationalists 14

INTRODUCTION

overthrew the Qing in 1911, and two thousand years of dynastic rule abruptly ended. Some astute church leaders realized that it would be imprudent to treat rising nationalism as an enemy. The church’s de facto position of limiting Chinese leadership in the church was proving embarrassing. This was even more damning given the sharp rise—both in quality and quantity—of the native clergy.50 Even in the early 1920s, all ninety-six church jurisdictions were led by foreigners. Some of them were not up to the task. One missionary noted that there were “even apostolic vicars, who after 25 or 30 years in China, know neither the Creed in Chinese, nor the commandments of God, nor any prayer.”51 This much was clear: if the church was to survive in China, it needed to devolve power to the Chinese. Pope Pius XI moved carefully. In 1922, he appointed Bishop Celso Costantini as his fi rst representative to China. Costantini set to work right away. Through his efforts and those of Vincent Lebbe, a Belgian missionary, the fi rst six Chinese priests in modern times were ordained bishops in 1926. It was a grand gesture as Pope Pius XI himself consecrated them in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. One of the new bishops was the Shanghai native Simon Zhu (Tsu) Kaimin (1868–1960). The indigenization of the Chinese hierarchy had begun. Even so, the vicar apostolic of Shanghai was still a French Jesuit. August Haouisée led the region from 1930 to 1948. He presided over the church’s continued growth. Already by 1933, Shanghai and Nanjing were divided into separate regions. The following year, the Shanghai church census counted 13 parishes, 400 mission stations, 553 schools, and 128,446 Catholics.52 These same years were brilliant for Shanghai as a whole as well. By 1937, the end of the so-called Nanjing decade, Shanghai itself was now the fi nancial center of China and its largest city. It was also the fi fth largest city in the world and one of its most colorful. A Guide to Catholic Shanghai described the city in January: Shanghai!—“The Gateway to China”, the World’s Greatest Potpourri, the city with a “billion dollar sky line”, the world’s most cosmopolitan stage with a cast of fifty nationalities supported by more than three million Orientals, pagodas and church spires, skyscrapers and mud huts, aeroplanes and wheelbarrows, battleships and sampans, millionaires and coolies, libertines and intellectuals, pagans and christians,—in a word, Shanghai is THE “City of Contrasts.”53 15

C H U R C H M I L I TA N T

By year’s end, the bright picture darkened drastically, for on August 14, 1937, Japanese warships pulled into Shanghai’s harbor. Chinese troops—although they fought bravely—were no match for the Japanese. There were up to a hundred thousand casualties. By December, six thousand Japanese troops marched through the International Concession. With the assistance of the International Red Cross, the French Jesuit Robert Jacquinot set up a safe zone for Chinese refugees—soon called the Jacquinot Zone.54 Yet the Japanese were in control of the city, and many missionaries passed the war years in internment. After the end of worldwide hostilities, there was a “Catholic renascence” in China.55 Pius XI had died in 1939, and his successor Pius XII—pope from 1939 to 1958—continued the policy of indigenization, naming many more native bishops for China. In 1946, the fi rst Chinese cardinal was named, and a formal church hierarchy was fully established. Shanghai itself was raised to a diocese. There were other positive developments as well. Archbishop Anthony Riberi was made the Vatican’s fi rst internuncio to China (with full rank of ambassador), and Catholic devotional life also flourished. In May 1947, Mary was crowned Queen of China at Sheshan (Zosé) Basilica, to the west of Shanghai.56 Riberi presided over the Mass, which was attended by twenty archbishops and bishops and sixty thousand Catholics. In 1948, Cardinal Spellman of New York—one of the most powerful Catholic churchmen in the world—visited China, and even met with Chiang Kai-shek. By then, the Shanghai Catholic community was quite robust. Even after further surrounding regions were separated from the diocese in 1949, it still had about 110,000 Catholics in a city of six million: the largest urban concentration of Catholics in China. Almost half of these Catholics lived in the city proper, and were ministered to by about 150 priests, the great majority of them Jesuit, both Chinese and foreign. About fi fty priests, mostly Chinese diocesan priests, worked in the suburban areas. 57 Shanghai also boasted the Jesuit and regional diocesan seminaries, and hundreds of seminarians and men and women religious as well. Even the CCP itself was impressed with the church’s institutional strength in Shanghai: sixty churches and chapels, eleven mission procurations, sixty-three schools (from the elementary to the university level), six hospitals, one observatory, seven charitable institutions, and six thousand rental units. 58 By 1948 the Catholic Church in China as a whole was also quite strong: 3.3 million Catholics out of a total population of 458 million, 16

INTRODUCTION

5,700 priests (nearly half of whom were Chinese), 978 brothers (60 percent Chinese), and 6,927 sisters (70 percent Chinese).59 In fact, China had a religious personnel-to-parishioner ratio that was the envy even of long-established Catholic nations. It was the result of one of the greatest missionary endeavors in the history of the church.

The Sinews of Catholic Power: Local Kinship Networks and Global Links The development of Shanghai Catholicism is not simply a history of institution building. The community’s strength on the eve of the 1949 Communist victory—as the above section implies—can be attributed to two further sources. The fi rst was the extended kinship networks: the Catholic clans. The second was its transnational ties to global Catholicism. The fi rst was indigenous and local. The second was international and universal, the very essence of the word “catholic.” The confluence of these two sources contributed to Catholic strength in Shanghai, its “sinews of power.” Let us fi rst examine the extended kinship networks. The largest among them were the Zhu, Ai, Lu, Xu, and Shen families. Many of these clans could trace their Catholicism back to the seventeenth century. Further, because of church proscription against intermarriage with non-Catholics (waijiao), many lineages were almost entirely Catholic. Most of these families were of humble means, but some branches were quite wealthy. Whether wealthy or poor, they had a proven track record of strong church support. They donated money to the church and supplied it with a large number of gifted religious personnel. It was these clans that had kept Catholicism alive in the region. Much has been written about these patrilineal kinship networks as they are one of the fundamental building blocks of Chinese society.60 According to Michael Szonyi, Chinese kinship has traditionally been seen as “static” and “monolithic,” and explained “in terms of the mechanistic implementation of an ideology of familism or the imposition of a unified orthodoxy by the state or social elites.” Szonyi, by contrast, sees kinship as complex, diverse, local, and dependent on historical contingencies: “constituted in a network of changing representations.”61 In short, kinship was practiced and strategic. Employing these insights, my main point here is to show that the Shanghai Catholic clans practiced kinship in a way that was both thoroughly Chinese and thoroughly 17

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Catholic. Naturally, there were also contested areas where the competing demands of traditional kinship practice had to be negotiated with the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Some elements of traditional Chinese kinship and Catholicism share a natural affi nity. Both privilege hierarchical organization, social harmony, the stability of the family unit, respect for ancestors, and a desire to perpetuate the lineage: “Be fruitful and multiply.” In addition, as long as Chinese Catholics did not slip into idolatry by worshipping their ancestors—as the Chinese Rites controversy had shown—they were permitted to pray for and to deceased relatives. This was a local application of the Catholic practice of praying for the faithful departed and an exercise in the doctrine of the communion of saints, which held that these same souls could intercede for the living. Yet there were also some contested areas between traditional Chinese kinship practice and Catholicism. For example, concubinage was widely practiced in China but forbidden by the church. Was it practiced in the Catholic community as well? There seem to be competing accounts. One branch member of a large clan categorically stated that it was forbidden. A person practicing concubinage ran the risk of being denied communion and shunned by the community. On the other hand, a distant and more privileged relative from the same clan, while showing old family photos, kept pointing out a certain “stepmother.” What was her role, when his mother was still very much alive? Indeed, an awkward moment ensued. Clan members “do not fi nd it difficult to deal with the multiple versions of kinship and its history that circulate in their society, but they are striking, indeed, seemingly contradictory, to the outside observer.”62 To illustrate the power and multiple connections of these Catholic clans, I will describe the Zhu family, one of Catholic Shanghai’s largest and most important families. A diagram of the current family genealogy extends to over ten generations and originates with a common ancestor who converted to Catholicism in the seventeenth century. The genealogy is thus structured in a traditional Chinese manner, and it also tells the story of the family’s Catholic faith.63 The Zhu family had extensive connections with the French Concession authorities, Chinese industry, other Catholic clans, and the church itself (especially the Jesuits).64 These multiple links were often forged at St. Ignatius High School, which was administered by the French Jesuits. As such, it served as an incubator for members of the Chinese Catholic elite, where they would perfect their humanistic, technical, and language skills. 18

INTRODUCTION

Some of its graduates would then study abroad in France and the United States. When they returned to Shanghai, they were the perfect compradors, intermediaries between international and Chinese business interests. The wealthiest branch of the Zhu clan was the family of Nicholas Tsu (Zhu Zhiyao, 1863–1955).65 The family even had a founding myth to explain its great wealth. The story held that one day, Zhu Zhiyao’s mother accidentally discovered a stack of gold bricks inside an oven. The family then moved to Shanghai and used the gold to fi nance their meteoric rise. In any event, by the 1920s, Zhu Zhiyao was one of the wealthiest men in Shanghai, and the family had extensive interests in shipping, banking, industry, public utilities, and real estate.66 Zhu Zhiyao owed his success to a number of other factors as well. His father had experience working on Chinese ships. His uncles by marriage were the famed Ma brothers: the former Jesuit priest Ma Xiangbo and Ma Jianzhong. These brothers were early graduates of St. Ignatius, and they maintained close contacts with the Jesuits and with the Chinese elite.67 These uncles paved the way for Nicholas to travel to France, where he studied science and the technical arts. He then returned to Shanghai and began as a comprador for the Bank of Indochina in Shanghai in 1897. By 1904, Zhu founded the Qiuxin workshops that embodied his “technological ambition,” and in which he produced everything from engines to railway carriages.68 Zhu “was committed to his bold vision of Chinese industrialization and dreamed of supplying the machinery indispensable for its success.”69 In short, according to Marie-Claire Bergère, his genius was not “simply to take over the techniques of production and management picked up from the West” but to adapt it “to the local social and cultural environment.”70 In this capacity, naturally, Zhu Zhiyao also had many business contacts. The most important was his close association with Lo Pahong. Together these men were leading members of the Gentry-Councilor Group, which in turn had close connections with the French concession authorities, including the consul general.71 Zhu Zhiyao also had close contacts with the church. His own brother was Simon Zhu Kaimin (1868–1960), mentioned earlier as one of the fi rst six Chinese bishops of modern times. Zhu Kaimin was made bishop of the neighboring Diocese of Haimen. In addition, one of Zhu Zhiyao’s sons became a diocesan priest and one of his daughters became a nun. Years later, at least one of his grandsons and one of his granddaughters also entered religious life. He had further church contacts through another brother, Joseph Zhu Jilin (1873–1952), who helped manage 19

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the family’s multiple business interests. Two of Joseph’s own children entered religious life. Martha Zhu Hongbao became a nun, and his son, Vincent Zhu Hongsheng (1916–1993), became a Jesuit priest. The second sinew of Shanghai Catholic power was its ties to global Catholicism. Catholics believed that Christ himself had instituted the papacy by giving the “keys of the kingdom” to St. Peter, the “rock” upon which the church was built. This made every succeeding pope the successor of St. Peter and the vicar of Christ. The pope then was the “perpetual, visible source and foundation of the unity of the Church” and “pastor of the universal Church over which” he had “full, supreme, immediate, and universal power.”72 In sum, because the pope was Christ’s representative on earth, a Catholic could not sever ties with the pope and still remain a Catholic. At root, this teaching was a doctrinal imperative, but it had important practical implications as well, for the Catholic doctrine of the universality of the church linked believers, not only with the Vatican, but also with Catholic communities worldwide. In an age of rising nationalism, here was a church that was proud of its supranational and universal character. For the church in Shanghai, the most visible examples of these links were the foreign missionaries and the prayers said at Mass for the pope. Further, resources from the global church had vastly increased the Shanghai Catholic community’s institutional footprint in the previous hundred years. These global links were an asset in good times, but they would be a liability should the political winds shift. Thus, in a time of rapid Communist victories, the church was tested as never before. The church had learned its lesson. Responding to Communism’s ideological atheism and the persecutions it launched against Christians worldwide, especially in Russia, the church began to array itself against this rising power. In fact, one of the earliest warnings against Communism was a heavenly one. In 1917, three Portuguese children from Fatima reported that Mary had appeared to them. Word spread, and by October 13, the last day of the apparitions, up to seventy thousand people—including newspaper reporters—gathered at the site in Fatima. Many of those present witnessed phenomena such as “the miracle of the sun,” in which the sun seemed to change colors and spin and dance in the sky. In one of the visions to the children, Mary asked for special prayers for Russia, saying, “If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing 20

INTRODUCTION

wars and persecutions of the Church.”73 Although not binding on the faithful because they were private revelations, the church ultimately approved these apparitions. They were consonant with Catholic belief. There were official pronouncements against Communism as well. As early as 1846, Pius IX condemned the “infamous doctrine” of Communism which, if adopted “would ultimately destroy . . . even society itself.” Leo XIII called it a “fatal plague.” Since then, there were further denunciations of Communism and the persecutions it unleashed against the church, not only in Russia, but in Mexico and Spain as well. The strongest came in 1937 from Pope Pius XI. In “Divini Redemptoris,” he condemned atheistic Communism as “a false messianic idea” and a “pseudo-ideal” with “no room for the idea of God.” Communism reduced man to a mere “cog-wheel.” It was a “danger” which aimed “at upsetting the social order and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization.”74 Such strident rhetoric—at times—had to be strategically explained. Distinctions had to be made between Communism as an ideology, as a political party, and as a governing body; and between Communist sympathizers and activists. For example, in 1941, “Divini Redemptoris” was interpreted as not applying to the American military assistance given to the Soviet Union in its battle against Hitler. But the general trend—while increasingly nuanced—was still fi rmly anti-Communist. In July 1949, the Vatican made a general ex-communication of all militant Communists.75 The decree stated that if Catholics favored Communist parties or published, wrote for, or read their literature, they could be denied the sacraments. Further, if Catholics defended or promulgated Communist doctrine, they incurred automatic excommunication. The following year, a follow-up Vatican decree barred from the sacraments both parents and children who were involved with Communist youth organizations.76 Further condemnations continued throughout the 1950s. Indeed, it seemed that the two systems were “utterly irreconcilable.”77 These official statements had direct bearing on the situation in China as well. Even though some church leaders were still notably apolitical, some—given the choice—at least sympathized with the Nationalists. For example, Archbishop Yu Pin (Yu Bin) of Nanjing had many contacts in the KMT government. He also had a lobbying office in Washington DC, and he even testified to Congress, warning of the dangers of Communism. When Nanjing fi nally fell, he was conveniently out of the country. 21

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He was a Chinese patriot, no doubt, and deeply committed to his people, but he was later reviled in the CCP press as a “tool of the imperialists.” He spent the rest of his days in Taiwan. There is great irony in all this. For too long the church was accused of not responding to the nationalistic aspirations of the Chinese people. But when some church leaders did become more politically involved, they would fi nd themselves on the losing side of a civil war. In fact, as if on cue, the CCP responded in kind to the church’s strong pronouncements against Communism. By the early 1950s, the CCP was publishing their own booklets that attacked well-known church institutions and figures. The titles speak volumes: Riberi: Imperialism’s Tool of Invasion; The Vatican: The Enemy of Peace and Democracy; The Vatican’s Reactionary Thought and Policy; and The Scum of Catholicism: Spellman, Riberi, and Yu Pin. The demands to stand against Communism were proving to be a heavy burden for the tiny flock in China to bear, especially as the CCP was becoming the governing party in vast regions of China. The Shanghai Catholic community had other weaknesses as well. It had a historical reliance on foreign protection. While foreign gunboats did shield the Shanghai populace as a whole from occasional violence, they also protected the church. Further, the church also had legal protection with the permissive treaties. Even accounting for the church’s considerable charitable activity to non-Christians and Father Jacquinot’s valiant efforts to protect refugees during the Japanese invasion, many Chinese still saw Christianity as intimately linked with imperialism. These were the weaknesses the CCP would use—repeatedly—as a wedge to try to split the community. Chinese resentment was on the rise. There was a fi nal weakness: the legacy of foreign control of the church. Although the Shanghai church was rapidly indigenizing, foreign Jesuits still held the key positions of authority. It was an embarrassing reality. When Auguste Haouisée, the highly regarded French Jesuit bishop, died in September 1948, Shanghai Catholics waited. Would their next bishop be a native son?

Catholic Life in Shanghai on the Eve of the Communist Victory The Shanghai Catholic community—with its undeniable strengths and weaknesses—was threatened on the eve of the Communist takeover, 22

INTRODUCTION

for by early 1949, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) surprised even itself with how rapidly it was advancing through the nation. Communist power was ascendant, and the church had already arrayed itself against this power. By then the Shanghai Catholic community—although spread throughout the city and its suburbs—was still heavily concentrated in a swath of land located within the leafy streets of the French Concession and its immediate environs. It was bounded on the north by Christ the King Church and Aurora Women’s College, to the south by St. Peter’s Church and the adjacent Jesuit-run Aurora University, and to the far west by the centuries-old Christian village and Jesuit mission compound of Xujiahui. Connect these three points and the “Catholic triangle” is formed. Even though the majority of its inhabitants were non-Christian, the term “Catholic triangle” does justice to the importance this tightly compact region had for Shanghai’s Catholics and, indeed, for the whole church in China, for within this triangle lay the most important Catholic schools and seminaries, the most dynamic parishes, and the most active Catholics. The community also possessed a certain intangible rhythm of life, a rhythm that was present in the churches, hospitals, schools, workplaces, and homes. It was a liturgically rich life with frequent Masses, devotions, pilgrimages, and processions. But what most animated the life of the community was a certain Catholic religious ethos, an “integralist” vision in which the church permeated all aspects of life. Thus, many Catholics lived in a self-contained “world of God.”78 And just as there were many who were convinced by the CCP’s vision of humanity and its destiny, there were others who were convinced by the church’s vision. In fact, a major reason for the imminent—perhaps unavoidable—conflict between the church and the CCP was their radically different visions of man. Ultimately, there could be little compromise between a church dedicated to an all-encompassing, integralist vision and a state dedicated to the same. It was this Catholic religious ethos—even on the eve of Shanghai’s “liberation”—that continued to attract converts. Catherine Ho, a student at an elite Catholic girl’s school, was drawn by the church’s masterpieces, the solemnity of the liturgy and Latin hymns, and the prayerfulness of her teachers: “I felt a powerful call, which, though inaudible, was irresistible. I already believed, and was willing to forsake everything so as to possess the truth. This was the inevitable result of seeking the truth, goodness and beauty: I asked to be baptized and enter the Church, to step across that sacred threshold.”79 23

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For many Catholics, crossing over that sacred threshold meant entering into the divine. It also meant distancing oneself from one’s earthly home, for the competing demands of church and state were soon set on a collision course, and Communist cadre and Catholic youth were soon engaged in mutual “combat.” In fact, only time would tell if the youthful idealism of both parties would forever make them heroes to their cause or pawns in a larger struggle—or both. This much, at least, they shared in common. The same quest for truth that brought some into the church could also drive them to “forsake everything” when that same church was threatened. Persecution, suffering, and martyrdom was part of the hundredfold they had been promised. Thus, a militant Catholicism was born. The possibility of militancy was always part of Catholic belief. In good times, it occupied one small part of a time-tested faith with a grand vision. But in difficult times, it loomed far larger. The tension between “turning the other cheek” and defending the faith had existed since the beginning of Christianity. In fact, Shanghai Catholics remembered Jesus’s own words: “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and gentle as doves” (Mt. 10:16). Now Catholics had to be wise enough to scrutinize every movement of those who wished them ill. In line with this militant Catholicism, the faithful were instructed that their church was composed of three parts. The souls in heaven were the church triumphant. Those still in purgatory were the church suffering. And those on earth were the church militant: ever reliant on the grace of God, but all too aware of the temptations of the flesh, the world, and the devil. It was this theology of the church militant that engendered—in Shanghai—a militant church. In fact, militancy was apparent in the very Catholic Mass itself, at the beginning of which Psalm 42 (43) was intoned: “Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause against an ungodly nation: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. For You are my God and my strength.” The psalm simply reminded Catholics of the righteousness of their cause when living in an ungodly nation. By holding this position, Catholics could be accused by the state of having divided loyalties. Their stance definitely made Catholics wary of the CCP’s promise of a bright Socialist future for China. Yet the firm position also afforded Catholics a clear sense of identity and purpose, an identity and purpose strong enough to stand up against even the most overwhelming assertion of state power. Catholic history abounds with the examples of its martyrs, many of whom were put to death for resisting what they considered the unjust 24

INTRODUCTION

demands of the state. The early Roman Christians—many mentioned in the very canon of the Mass—would not worship the emperor. St. Thomas More would not put his king above the church. More recently, Shanghai Catholics would draw inspiration from Father Miguel Pro, a Mexican Jesuit, who was executed in 1927 by a fi ring squad for resisting his country’s draconian anti-Catholic laws. An old missionary now based in Taiwan told me that one cannot overlook the climate of martyrdom in which the Shanghai Catholic community was steeped during those trying times. Finally, it was common at the time for Catholics to pray after Mass: “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Indeed, St. Michael was often depicted slaying a supine devil at his feet. And the devil—for some Catholics—was now disguised as Communism and was “seeking the ruin” of the church. But did this have to be? The popes had denounced Communism, but now that the nation was falling into the hands of a Communist regime, now that the CCP was becoming the state, how far should Catholics go in resisting the one party-state in the name of resisting the atheistic ideology that it held? Further, some parts of scripture were clear about the Christian duty of obedience to lawful state authority. Shanghai Catholics wrestled with these questions. Arriving at the right answer was at times clear and at times ambiguous. Sometimes the struggle to discern was excruciating. After all, the gospel had said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” What, then, belonged to Caesar, and what to God? When some Catholics decided their church deserved the better portion, that the only option was to resist the increasingly aggressive demands of CCP religious policy, then the logic of Catholic militancy, the will to “forsake everything,” gave rise to a certain lyricism, with implications at once noble and terrifying. One young Catholic would later write to his mother the following: Dear Mother, from your letter, I know that you are distressed about my imprisonment and hard labor. I know you love me dearly. But my imprisonment and hard labor isn’t at all bitter because I have God’s protection. . . . The reason that I am in jail is because I am a 25

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Catholic Youth [Gongqing]. It is because I attended the catechism groups, was not willing to attend the turncoat Catholic’s “Accuse the Bishop” meeting, and, moreover, shouted out the slogan: Long live, Bishop [Kung]. . . . Mother, I am not reactionary, I forge ahead together with Christ’s representative the bishop. I oppose [the idea that] Marxist-Leninism, the Communist Party and the government are righteous. I opposed them in the past, I oppose them in the present, and I will also oppose them in the future.80 Such thoroughgoing opposition to the regime, such thoroughgoing commitment to one’s cause, these are the passions that fill these pages. But we are getting ahead of our story. For the time being, there was an uneasy peace between the party and the church, during which Catholics were of two minds. On the one hand, they knew that—almost from its inception—the CCP had killed priests and destroyed churches. Most recently, during the “bloody winter” of 1947–1948, over thirty Trappist monks died on a death march. On the other hand, they also knew the churches worked closely with the CCP during the Japanese invasion. Some missionaries even took care of PLA soldiers. The competing viewpoints reached a compromise: the church would hold its ground. Just before his death in September 1948, the bishop of Shanghai wrote a pastoral letter telling Catholic religious personnel that unless there was grave danger, they were to remain at their posts, as their presence would “strengthen the faith of the faithful.”81 Shanghai Catholics had high hopes, but they also had deep fears, for in those same months—despite KMT press censorship—it was becoming clear that the PLA was rapidly “liberating” the nation. Yet “liberation” threatened Catholic Shanghai. By November, the pressure was taking its toll. James E. Walsh, an American bishop working in Shanghai, saw defeatism spread throughout the church. In a letter to his superior, he noted, “it is possible to live and work under the Commies for a time, even though it is certain that they will scotch or kill us in the end (that is, once their power in a place is really established and consolidated).” The writing was on the wall: “Nobody has any illusions about the Red determination to eliminate all religion.”82 Walsh then asked the question that Catholics would repeatedly ask themselves over the next years: “Do we walk out and give them the field without the least struggle, or do we keep up our work until we are put out?”83 26

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If we do not take steps cautiously, we will not liberate them, [rather] we will cause them to resist us and face us as enemies. SMA, B22–2–1

To “scattered rifle fi re,” the soft-soled soldiers of the PLA entered Shanghai on May 24, 1949.1 The main attack occurred at Xujiahui where some bullets pierced windows near the Jesuit seminary. The mostly peasant soldiers—encountering little resistance—fanned out through the city. They were “quiet and disciplined and they even politely refused cigarettes. They joked with the Jesuits at Xujiahui.”2 For the past several years, the PLA had moved from strength to strength—exceeding even the wildest expectations of its generals. One by one, its armed enemies were vanquished. Now the CCP had its biggest prize. The Military Control Commission (MCC) took control of the city. Frederic Wakeman comments, “[w]hatever public gawkiness the PLA cadres may have displayed, their organizational takeover was brilliantly executed.”3 Shanghai was liberated.4 For months before the takeover, John Clifford, a young Jesuit seminarian from San Francisco, had watched moneychangers operate near Christ the King Parish. They had served as a “barometer” of Shanghai’s “frenzied hopelessness” and “nervous restlessness.”5 As the PLA entered the city, the streets were deserted. Many waited at home “to see how their new masters would behave.”6 Clifford continues: But nothing happened. The city changed hands with little trouble and almost no bloodshed. Slowly the fears of my Chinese friends began to die, and the city itself relaxed. The letdown was doubly dramatic, because the ruthlessness of communism had been well advertised, sometimes by advance communist agents themselves. 27

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When this appeared to be false, the Chinese were flooded with hope; for unrealized fear has a tendency to become unwarranted optimism.7 The takeover had been anticlimactic, and the war-weary citizens gradually became more optimistic. After all, had they not seen even worse in the past twelve years? Did not the Japanese occupation, and later, the civil war, produce economic hardship, a flood of refugees, and violence? Surely, Shanghai would survive. In fact, the occupation of the city was humane. As Clifford noted, there was almost no loss of civilian life. The Shanghai populace—it seemed—was willing to give their “new masters” a chance. Despite the immediate suspension of Chinese-operated publications, and the emergence of underground CCP operatives, life proceeded normally, as did Catholic life. The diocesan ordinations slated for June 4 occurred without incident. Even missionaries were impressed. As late as November, Bishop Walsh wrote, “[l]ife in this town is orderly and quiet—which it was far from being when I originally arrived.”8

Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei In fact, life was “orderly” enough that the church went ahead with a further reorganization of the newly erected Shanghai Diocese. The move was necessary as the diocese was territorially unwieldy (it was now split in half by the Haimen and Nanjing dioceses). In order to rectify this situation, on July 18, 1949, Anthony Riberi, the Vatican internuncio to China, wrote to Fernand Lacretelle, the Shanghai Jesuit Mission superior, and told him that the present Shanghai Diocese would be subdivided into two dioceses and two apostolic prefectures.9 The territory north of the Yangtze would be divided into the apostolic prefectures of Haizhou and Yangzhou. The territory south of the Yangtze would be divided into the Shanghai Diocese and the newly erected Suzhou Diocese. The same letter named Ignatius Kung (Gong) Pinmei as the fi rst bishop of the brand new and adjacent Suzhou Diocese. Although small, with sixteen priests and about twenty thousand Catholics, Suzhou would be headed by a native son. Kung was known as a prayerful and pious priest. He knew that becoming a bishop in such an uncertain time could demand martyrdom. To this end, he first recollected himself on a thirtyday retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Only then did he accept the nomination. 28

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Ignatius Kung Pinmei was born in 1900 in Pudong (the eastern part of Shanghai).10 He was from a land-owning family with a long Catholic lineage. Kung was a product of both traditional Confucian culture and of French-inspired Catholicism. He was proud of his nationality. Years later, he would publicly state that he was born in China, had never left it, and would die in China.11 Tutored at any early age in the Confucian classics, Kung later attended Catholic schools where he perfected his French and Latin. He entered the preparatory seminary at age nineteen. Eleven years later, he was ordained a priest. There was an endearing aspect to the man as well. Kung had feet of clay, for once he had nearly been thrown out of the seminary for the egregious violation of smoking, conduct—in the eyes of his stern superiors—unbecoming a seminarian. For much of his priestly life, Kung worked in Catholic schools in the region. His last job was as pastor and director of St. Louis Gonzaga Parish and parish school. Kung thus had pastoral and administrative skills. He also had a good working relationship with the Jesuits. This last qualification was crucial, given that the Jesuits had served so long in the region and still controlled many of its institutions. The excitement that a native son had been named to the Suzhou Diocese was palpable to many Shanghai Catholics. On October 7, 1949, Riberi himself consecrated Kung at St. Ignatius Church in Xujiahui. The Mass was filled to overflowing. Yet in the larger and much more important Shanghai Diocese, no new bishop had been named. Riberi’s July letter had been silent. Had something gone wrong? In the absence of a bishop, the Shanghai Diocese continued to be administered by the Jesuits.12 Yves Henry was the vicar capitular, the de facto head of the diocese; Fernand Lacretelle was the superior of the Jesuit mission; and George Germain was the treasurer for both the diocese and the Jesuit mission. The Jesuit School of Theology was headed by a young American Jesuit, Charles McCarthy, who Lacretelle noted, “gives confidence to everyone.”13

The Security Apparatus and the United Front Strategy There were two major reasons why the situation—in Shanghai at least— was relatively normal. First, from the beginning, and behind the “benevolent façade,” the regime started to erect a vast security apparatus in the city. Chen Yi became mayor, and his good friend, Pan Hannian, became deputy mayor. Pan Hannian also became “secretary general of 29

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the Shanghai People’s Government and chief of the Communist Party Central Committee’s Eastern China Bureau.” As such, Pan would be in charge of both the united front and of security work. He was a natural choice, having recently returned from doing underground security work in Hong Kong. He also had an easy rapport with Shanghai’s capitalists, “some of whom were friends of his wife’s father, a Cantonese banker.” He was cultured and urbane, and spoke fluent Shanghaiese. Chen Yi, by contrast, was a rougher character, who looked like a gangster.14 Yang Fan was appointed director of police headquarters, which was later renamed the Public Security Bureau (PSB).15 By June 15, 1949, it was organized into the following departments: secretariat, administration, criminal police, social affairs, fi re brigade, and logistics.16 The restructuring was thorough and highly secretive. Chen Geng, a security specialist, had previously worked underground in Shanghai. Now he became shadow head of the PSB.17 The new regime also had many resources to rely on in its security work, for the French and English colonialists had left an ample prison network. Many of the police stations could hold up to one hundred prisoners each. In addition, there were three great prisons in the city: Massenet, South City Jail, and Ward Road Jail (also known as Tilanqiao). The fi rst two prisons could each hold about two thousand people. But Ward Road Jail was the giant. Located in the north of the city, it had more than four thousand cells and could hold up to fi fteen thousand prisoners. In time, the PSB itself would create at least two major branches to deal with what it considered counterrevolutionaries and spies. The fi rst branch dealt with domestic Chinese cases. The second branch—more elite by nature—dealt with expatriates and Chinese who had international connections. This branch was staffed with cadres expert in the major foreign languages. The PSB also employed Europeans willing to spy on fellow expatriates. The CCP was also astute enough to know that it would be easier to control the population if it multiplied its eyes and ears throughout the city.18 To this end, it established residents’ committees on a block-byblock basis in all of Shanghai’s neighborhoods. They would assess the needs of their neighbors, but they would also report suspicious activity to the police. In this way, the residents’ committees, often staffed by mobilized homemakers, would work closely with the PSB. Some were even delighted to catch “counterrevolutionaries” and were “proud of being part of the political game.”19 30

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The second major reason why the situation in Shanghai was relatively normal was that the CCP needed all the friends it could get. It dared not unnecessarily antagonize groups that could—at least temporarily— contribute to national stability. After all, the civil war had not yet been completely won, and active combat still raged on in the southwest, in Xinjiang, and in Tibet.20 Even in the south, there were occasional acts of sabotage. Railroads were destroyed and buildings blown up. A counterattack from Taiwan was still possible, and at times it seemed that the superpowers would enter the fray and ignite World War III. The choice was simple. The CCP could try to subjugate all competing loci of power at once. If it did so, it would risk alienating many groups and endanger its precarious hold over China. On the other hand, it could use its tried-and-true united front strategy by co-opting groups that—for the sake of national stability—would at least meet the CCP halfway. The ultimate fate of these groups—among them democratic parties and religious groups—would thus be determined later. In fact, these groups would soon find the “helping hand” of the CCP to be “an iron fist in a velvet glove.”21 Yet for the time being, given the choice between alienating possible partners and using them for their own ends, party leaders wisely chose the latter. The CCP was once again relying on the virtue that had gotten them this far: patience. To carry out these goals and in the absence of a constitution, the CCP put into effect the Common Program on September 29, 1949, during the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.22 It remained the law of the land until 1954, when the Constitution was promulgated. The document was a showcase of united front strategy, designed to rally as many people as possible to the new regime, and to present a benign face to the outside world. As such, the document was deliberately open to various interpretations. Yet the CCP itself remained its fi nal arbiter. This should come as no surprise, for as Jacques Guillermaz argues, the document’s main point “was to win for the Communist Party both the political allegiance and the loyalty of the Chinese population, and to give concrete, legal expression to the principle of the united front.”23 Even so, Guillermaz continues, “[a]lthough the Common Program was deliberately reassuring in tone and omitted all details of the pace and timing of future transformations, it did not allow the slightest compromise on basic principles; every trace of liberalism was accompanied almost immediately by a reservation.”24 As a result, the Common Program “could appear as a 31

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reasonable, well-ordered whole with acceptable claims. There seemed to be no intention to enforce stringent policies and encourage class struggle; class struggle was not even mentioned in the program. Nothing gave any indication of the brutal surgery the new leaders would shortly impose on Chinese society.”25 In other words, the history of CCP implementation of religious policy is complicated for the simple reason that the CCP would often publicly call for restraint, all the while practicing violent coercion. “The Communists speak in one language to outsiders,” one observer has noted, “and another at home.”26 A case in point: article 5 of the Common Program allowed “freedom of thought, speech, publication, assembly, and communication” as well as religious freedom.27 But article 7 insisted that the “People’s Republic of China shall suppress all counterrevolutionary activities, [and] severely punish all . . . counterrevolutionary elements who collaborate with imperialism, commit treason against the fatherland and oppose the cause of people’s democracy.”28 Further, although the Catholic Church was officially recognized in China, only the regime—it would soon become apparent—would defi ne what was legitimate religious activity and what was counterrevolutionary activity hidden “under the cloak of religion.” This distinction would soon have important consequences for all religious groups active in China. For the Shanghai CCP, and the Shanghai Catholic community, then, the lines were drawn. Astute Catholics realized this. They were under no illusions. For in the same November 1949 letter that Walsh wrote about “quiet” Shanghai, he added that, on the other hand, there is a “new era that is on the horizon; venenum in cauda [venom in the tail], as they say.”29 The “new era” was arriving in Shanghai and it was proving to hold “venom” for the Catholic Church. Yet what Walsh called venom was, for the CCP, medicine necessary for the consolidation of state power. The CCP had so far been patient, but it would not be patient in all areas. After all, it had won the civil war.

Pressure on Three Fronts: Taxes, School Curricula, and Religious Policy The Catholic Church in Shanghai would soon feel the sting of state power in three main areas: taxation, education, and religious policy. First, there was the pressure of high taxation. The recent wars had ravaged China, the taxation system was broke, and—most galling—the 32

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KMT had fled to Taiwan with the entire national treasury. Thus, the new regime was desperately short of revenue just when it needed it most to rebuild the nation. As a result, the regime decided to implement draconian tax measures. Those with the deepest pockets would be hit the hardest. And, as the fi nancial center of China, Shanghai had the deepest pockets. In the face of such pressures, Shanghai businessmen fled to Hong Kong and businesses began to suffer. There was a general economic downturn. “Business is dead,” remarked Charles McCarthy.30 Heavy taxation obviously had some negative side effects. The new regime, however, had no choice but to raise revenue. Those who decided, or were forced, to remain in Shanghai soon had to resign themselves to paying high taxes or to fi nd creative ways to deal with their predicament. Shanghai was also the fi nancial center for the Catholic Church in China. As we have seen, the diocese and the Jesuit order alone had many churches, schools, and charitable institutions in the city. The church also owned much housing, which it often rented out to poor Catholics at low rates. But Shanghai was also a key economic link for the church because of the mission procurations, of which there were more than ten. These procurations were owned by a number of Catholic missionary orders that worked in China’s vast interior. They served as conduits, banks, and even rest houses for transiting missionaries. The procurations would receive money from overseas, including subsidies from the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide), and then channel the money directly to their respective missions inland. Sometimes they would also invest their money, at times in more Shanghai real estate. It is difficult to ascertain how much real estate the church owned in Shanghai. But it was substantial enough. A former seminarian made an educated guess that it could have been up to 10 percent of the city. 31 Although such an estimate is almost certainly too high, what is certain is that the CCP was also aware of the church’s substantial land ownership: from the sixty churches and missions to the six thousand rental properties.32 With the advance of the PLA, the church took measures to safeguard its assets. Just before the Communist takeover, George Germain, procurator for the diocese, liquidated some properties.33 He then invested about $1 million in American “shares and other securities.”34 The money belonged “partly to the Society, partly to the Diocese and partly to other Congregations.”35 He gave “full power of attorney” to the Paris Province 33

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procurator.36 It was a risky strategy, since the church would no longer be able to count on the rental fees from these units. The capital was now invested abroad. By the end of 1948, Riberi stopped Germain from selling off these properties. The church, he knew, would need the revenue they provided in the future.37 It was clear that the CCP needed to levy high taxes during this period of national reconstruction. In fact, high taxes were nothing new in China’s recent past, for they had also been quite high under the KMT, especially during wartime. But for many people in Shanghai, these taxes were exorbitant. Some could not help but think that taxation was being used as a weapon against them. “The government has turned on the pressure in taxation, and for those mission procurations which obtained revenue from real estate, the measures amount to confiscation,” one missionary would write.38 Thus, for the time being, the church had no choice but to pay the high taxes, and to try to continue funding as much of its charitable activity as possible. Yet the fate of church property, in fact all private property, was even worse in rural areas, including those areas just outside of Shanghai. Here government policy did amount to outright confiscation. In fact, the “land reform” between 1949 and 1950 was brutal and violent. Under the watchful eyes of the PLA, the “people” targeted landlords and confiscated their properties. Many Catholics, on the other hand, had been taught that accepting such properties was a violation of the tenth commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.”39 Even in the rural and suburban areas surrounding Shanghai, churches and charitable institutions were almost entirely appropriated by the state. The properties ostensibly went to the people, often enough they remained in the hands of the party. However, in Shanghai—at least for the time being—church institutions, although heavily taxed, largely remained in church hands. The second major government initiative that affected the church in the fi rst year and a half was the CCP’s educational policy. The CCP knew that the future of China lay with the youth. It was imperative, therefore, that it control the “hearts and minds” of the rising generation. To this end, the CCP rapidly established full ideological control over the schools. With such a strong Catholic school system in the city, the church was about to suffer another setback. Within a month of its entry into Shanghai, the new regime began “reforming” school curricula and textbooks. As one might expect, early 34

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CCP educational policy in Shanghai fi rst sought to eradicate not necessarily religious influence, but the influence of the former regime. When Shanghai was “liberated,” all schools were ordered to reopen. On June 20, the newly formed Shanghai Municipal Education Department— guided by the MCC—held a meeting for middle-school principals and teachers.40 They were told that KMT civics and military education would be abolished and replaced with Communist political courses. In addition, all KMT youth groups and student democratic groups were to be disbanded immediately. As for private schools, they were allowed—for the time being—to continue functioning, as long as they followed the laws of the government. CCP cadres were told not to “look down” on these schools, and to permit foreign teachers to continue at their posts as long as they did not “impose an enslaving education.” Yet there was a somber warning for the private schools: “school affairs are the People’s affairs.” Thus, the meeting demonstrated that the authorities did not yet desire to take over the private middle schools, only to transform them.41 Yet even these moves might not cause too much consternation in church circles. In all fairness, educational policy had been quite strict under the KMT as well, for the Nationalist Educational Plan of 1937 had basically made all schools—even religious schools—into organs of the state. The Nationalists had not permitted mandatory religious activities or religious instruction during school hours. How much worse could it be under the CCP? Yet, in time, religion was barred from the school curricula, and priests and sisters were marginalized. Catholic parents soon complained that their children were “filled with nothing but materialism in the so-called ‘Catholic’ schools.”42 Lay teachers had to teach directly from the official texts, even if the material went against their consciences. In addition, the CCP began organizing Communist youth groups and stationing more political cadres at the schools. The universities were among the last to come under Communist control. In February 1950, courses at Aurora University were still proceeding normally. But then the same pattern followed. Religion was taken out of the curriculum. Professors who had been educated abroad had to be “retrained.” And enrollment dropped because of increasing fi nancial hardship that was partially due to the higher taxes. The CCP seized on this opportunity by creating low-cost political universities. They were an attractive option, especially as they offered an abbreviated “short course” and promised their students jobs in the new government. The 35

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China Missionary Bulletin disparaged these hastily founded institutions as feeding their students “rice and Marxism,”43 thus creating rice Marxists. It was a jab at those who had formerly attacked the church for producing “rice Christians.” The third front was CCP religious policy. Religious policy already had been quite brutal in other regions of China. Many churches had already been confiscated, and religious personnel had been harassed, imprisoned, or even killed. The reality was sobering. The world looked on with horror when on July 9, 1947, the PLA Eighth Route Army attacked Our Lady of Consolation Trappist Abbey located in a barren mountain region northwest of Beijing.44 During the ensuing forced march, thirty-three of the seventy-five monks died.45 The PLA seemed to be making good on its promise to eradicate religion. There were other such incidents as well. In fact, the July 1948 issue of the China Missionary published an incomplete list of eighty-seven priests and other Catholic religious personnel who had been killed by the CCP during the previous eighteen months. Some were shot, others stoned to death, and others run through with bayonets.46 The spike in violence lasted from the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945 to the summer of 1948, when the PLA began its advance south from Shenyang. Then the policy changed and the violence quickly abated. “Leftist adventurism,” an attempt to push the revolution forward too rapidly, was denounced inside the party. The reasons? First, the CCP grew increasingly sensitive to world opinion. Second, as the PLA rapidly gained territory, it did not yet have time to indoctrinate the masses against religion. Third, the CCP “learned from the Russian experience that efforts to completely stamp out religious groups provoke only ill will abroad and undue resistance, even martyrs, at home.”47 Finally, cadres were “increasingly aware of the complexities involved in dealing with religious leaders and their groups, resulting in an increasing sophistication in methods for handling them.”48 In short, the new CCP policy was to avoid creating martyrs. More sophisticated methods were brought to bear. At fi rst, it was enough to limit the movement of the foreign clergy, a policy already implemented in Shanghai’s neighboring regions. In Haizhou prefecture, for example, several foreign priests had already been imprisoned for several years. Now freedom of movement was circumscribed for missionaries in Shanghai as well. They were no longer issued permits to travel into the interior. For missionaries who had long traveled into the 36

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surrounding Catholic fishing and farming villages to say Mass and hear confession—especially during Easter—this was a hardship. These pastoral burdens would now fall exclusively on the shoulders of Chinese priests. In fact, foreign priests were soon limited to a five-mile radius of the city.49 As a result, according to a contemporary account, even foreign Jesuit seminarians, were “shifting, at considerable cost, from Mandarin to Shanghai dialect, because there’s no apostolate outside Shanghai for them in the foreseeable future.”50 Thus, church leaders felt pressure on these three fronts. How would they respond? Indeed, they were divided, and their response was strongly colored by how long they thought the new regime would last. We cannot forget that some Chinese—Catholic priests among them—thought the Nationalists would soon return. Others in the church were not so optimistic. They thought the new regime was here to stay. After all, they argued, Russia had already been Communist for more than thirty years. At one extreme were the hardliners. In the eyes of some, this group refused “to consider any gesture of conciliation, even in matters not directly concerning the Faith.”51 One such hardliner was Fernand Lacretelle, the Jesuit mission superior. The “saintly” Lacretelle was a highly respected churchman who had lived in China for more than twenty years. He was a canon lawyer by training and a rigorous one at that. For him, there was no compromise with Communism. Rome’s directives were to be implemented to the letter of the law. Thus, any Catholics who joined the CCP were automatically excommunicated; children who joined the Communist Youth League were to be denied communion; and Catholics were strongly discouraged from reading the Communist newspapers and marching in Communist-led parades. Some voices of moderation challenged this position. If there was absolutely no compromise with the new regime, they argued, then Catholics should abstain from food as well because food came from the government.52 At the other extreme were the compromisers, those who, “taking advantage of the maximum license allowed them by Canon Law, would compromise on every possible point.”53 They could have been motivated by fear, sympathy for the new regime, or a keen sense of which way the political winds were blowing. The majority of Shanghai Catholics were caught in the middle. They knew that—for the time being at least—they had to compromise with the new regime in order to survive. The return of the Nationalists was nowhere in sight. And the CCP had proven far more powerful than 37

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originally thought. Given the early pressures brought to bear on the Catholic schools, it is no accident that Beda Chang (Zhang Zhengming), a Catholic high-school principal, was the fi rst to formulate a workable position vis-à-vis the CCP. His position began to take shape in early 1950. Beda Chang had entered the Jesuits in 1925.54 After his priestly ordination in 1940, he obtained his doctoral degree from the Sorbonne. Upon his return to Shanghai, he was made principal of St. Ignatius High School in Xujiahui, which he soon turned into one of the best high schools in the city. Chang was held in high regard, for in time he was also made a dean at Aurora University, director of the Jesuit-run Bureau of Sinology, and a consultor to the Jesuit mission superior. According to a contemporary, Chang—in Shanghai at least—was “by far the most influential teacher, lecturer and writer in Catholic cultural circles.”55 Chang fi rst studied the new regime’s religious policy and the place of the Catholic Church in modern Chinese society.56 He compared the current predicament of the Catholic Church in China to the unfolding events in Eastern Europe. Both places were under Communism, yet the similarities ended there as the church in Eastern Europe often held a majority Catholic population and long had local bishops. China, on the other hand, had a small Catholic minority which was still led mainly by foreign bishops. Chang knew China’s church was susceptible to the charge that it was foreign. Therefore, Chang argued, the church must— at all costs—avoid being labeled antipatriotic or imperialist.57 Chang’s “central position” mediated between collaboration and confrontation. It called for “an absolute unswerving allegiance to the Church at all times when the Faith was at stake—an allegiance, however, that held always the possibility of concessions on points of secondary importance.”58 In sum, Catholics were taught to yield in secondary matters, but remain fi rm in the essentials. Jean-Claude Coulet explains why Chang’s policy was the wisest: Never at any time did he have any illusion about those with whom he would have to deal, nor did he cherish the vain hope that a wise and fi rm attitude such as he had outlined would avail to turn the officials from their plans for the destruction of the Church. On the other hand the Catholics would have to give every proof of the sincerity of their efforts towards conciliation. The struggle would then be seen as a purely religious one and nothing would avail to shake the unity of the people standing fi rm behind 38

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their priests. If that could be achieved, hostile propaganda would be powerless to create illusions as to the door at which the real responsibility for the cleavage should be laid.59 Chang’s strategy would soon be put to the test.

CCP Religious Policy in Shanghai Takes Shape: The Three-Self Movement Within months, the Shanghai Catholic community realized it was under pressure: taxes were heavy, school curricula had been changed, and foreign priests were restricted in their movements. Yet the church still enjoyed some freedom. It could operate its churches, train its religious personnel, and appoint its leaders. In this atmosphere, some Catholics wondered if Shanghai would be spared some of the harsh measures brought to bear in the rest of the country. The answer emerges from the “secret” document “Instructions on Questions Concerning Catholic and Protestant Churches” from the Shanghai Municipal Archives.60 Numbered B22–2–1, the handwritten document appears to be perhaps the fi rst from the newly formed Shanghai Municipal Religious Affairs Office.61 As such, it gives concrete evidence that, as early as the summer of 1950, a national religious policy was taking shape and that Shanghai was to be no exception in its implementation. The document calls on cadres not to make important decisions on their own but to report often to the center. In fact, the document is nothing less than an early CCP blueprint for dealing with the Christian churches in China. The document begins by educating cadres on the scope of what would be called “religious work.” It gives an accurate assessment of the state of the churches in China. It not only explains that there were three million Catholics in China (as compared to seven hundred thousand Protestants), and twelve thousand priests (half of whom were foreigners), but it also notes that Catholics had a unified organization and central leadership under the pope. The document then provides a theoretical framework: “Marxists are absolute atheists. We believe that religion is an impediment to the people’s awakening.”62 In short, the ultimate goal of the CCP was still an atheistic society. The goal was clear, but in the twenty-eight years since its inception, the CCP had come to implement religious policy in different ways. In fact, there were two competing camps—the activists and 39

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the gradualists—which differed in their methods. The activists held that religion must be rooted out by aggressive, even violent means, if necessary. Aggressive means called for using “militant” religious workers who were trained to educate and remold religious believers.63 Violent means entailed everything from burning churches to killing religious leaders. In order to hasten the arrival of an atheistic utopia, militants were not above using antireligion campaigns and state terror. This school of thought held that the time had come to defi nitively liberate the masses from the idols of their own making. The gradualists, on the other hand, were more cautious and patient. They believed religion would die of its own accord when people saw the fruits of Communism. In the short term, it was only necessary to put religious bodies under the control of the government. Lenin and others were quoted as saying that “religion, if effectively circumscribed in its own sphere while the class struggle moves relentlessly against it, will eventually fade away.”64 Compulsory methods were therefore unnecessary. In addition, the more practically minded in this camp further argued that antagonizing religious believers would simply cause them to hate the party, thus frustrating the advance of the revolution. There might even be a backlash in which they might unite against an intrusive party. Some also argued that religious groups could be used to attack common enemies, only to be dropped later. In other words, they called for using—once again—the effective united front strategy. What method would be implemented in Shanghai? Addressed to fellow cadres engaged in “religious work,” the “Instructions” document is quite clear. It cautions that in implementing religious policy, cadres “cannot depend on simple executive orders and a harsh way to deal” with religious believers. “If we do not take steps cautiously, we will not liberate them, [rather] we will cause them to resist us and face us as enemies.” Make no mistake, religion would eventually be eradicated. But for the time being, cadres were not to support the antireligion movement. Instead, the CCP would use patriotism (a term that only it had the power to defi ne) as a wedge to divide religious believers. “We will lead and support patriots within the church and we will unite the majority of the believers to fight against the minority who are linking up with imperialists.” Then, “step by step, we will help the church shake off imperialist influences and economic connections. In the end we will transform the church into the Chinese people’s own self-governing, self-propagating, and self-fi nancing religious enterprise.”65 40

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What was this “self-governing, self-propagating, and self-financing religious enterprise”? It was the Three-Self Reform Movement (Sanzi gexin yundong), also known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM).66 The TSPM fi rst gained ground in a series of meetings in May 1950, when Zhou Enlai told Christian leaders that the churches “must become fully indigenous, in government, in support and in personnel.”67 Protestants, having actually invented the term, were familiar with the three-selfs concept. Originally, it had been a strategy to help mission churches rapidly develop into mature, mission-sending churches by becoming “selfgoverning, self-propagating, and self-fi nancing.” Whether by accident or design, Zhou Enlai now redefined the term to mean that the churches should be weaned off all foreign money and personnel. Such a proposition was—by nature—initially acceptable enough for many Chinese Protestants. Yet it was more offensive to Catholic sensibilities because of their spiritual allegiance to the pope. To this end, Zhou conceded that although Catholics must break political and economic relations with the Vatican, they could still maintain “religious” ties with the pope.68 What Zhou neglected to say, and this would affect both Catholics and Protestants, was that the church would be forced to replace one master with another: the CCP would now control the churches. At the same meetings, Wu Yaozong, the national director of the YMCA, cemented his relationship with the new regime. It was an enormous victory for the CCP to have a Christian leader of Wu’s stature publicly on their side. This was no accident. In fact, commentators have often noted that Wu had strong CCP sympathies and hint that he had long been an underground party member.69 In fact, the YMCA itself often acted as a safe haven for underground party members. Wu set to work right away drafting a manifesto for the churches. “The pervading theme of the Manifesto was imperialism, how Christianity had been related to it, how imperialism would continue to threaten China, and how Christians in China should purge themselves of imperialist connections and counter the imperialist attacks of the future.”70 The manifesto was fi nally published in July 1950. The “Instructions” document itself, written in the same month, makes mention of this fact. “Patriots” such as Wu were “signing declarations calling up people to separate from imperialist influence and economic connections and to adopt the three-selves as the goal of the church in the future.”71 The manifesto was officially adopted by the Protestant churches at a meeting of the National Christian Council (NCC) held in Shanghai, three 41

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months later, from October 18 to 25.72 Richard Bush notes that this was a “watershed” for the Protestant churches, as leadership then began to devolve from the NCC to the Three-Self Movement.73 Protestants who signed the manifesto multiplied. According to Wu, they numbered some one hundred eighty thousand by April 1951, the date when the ThreeSelf Movement was “officially constituted.”74 The Protestant churches were being severed from their connections abroad. Why did so many Protestant churches quickly acquiesce to the CCP? The reason was that the CCP deftly exploited their weaknesses. First, some urban Protestant pastors were liberal in both their theology and politics. For them, condemning imperialism was part and parcel of advancing the “kingdom,” no matter the deleterious effects on the church itself. In fact, as we saw above, some pastors had long sympathized with the CCP, or were even longtime underground party members. Second, without a pope and a central teaching Magisterium, Protestants were more subject to personal interpretation as to what constituted Christianity. Third, they too were under a great deal of pressure to conform. Still, not all Protestants leaders succumbed to CCP pressure. This was especially true of leaders in the more conservative Evangelical and fundamentalist branches of Protestantism. Many of these leaders knew that the subtext of the Three-Self Movement was that the churches would gradually be made into pliable tools of the state. Often, their “hostility” was “based upon rigid biblical conservatism, resistance to any form of central organization, and to inter-church mergers, or to a combination of such factors.”75 One Protestant group that ultimately resisted and began to rival the TSPM was Watchman Nee’s Little Flock.76 Another Protestant pastor who opposed the regime was the evangelist Wang Mingdao. In time—despite a few holdouts—most Protestant churches would be co-opted into the TSPM. Yet the July 1950 “Instructions” states a problem: “But in the powerful Catholic Church now we do not have such a movement. We hope that the local government will pay attention to the patriotic Catholics and unite them at a proper time to launch such a movement.”77

Interlude: Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei During this transitional period, the Shanghai Diocese still enjoyed many freedoms. The most important of which was that the link with the universal church remained intact. Therefore, while the CCP implemented its 42

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policies, the church was still free—despite state power that encroached by the day—to implement its own policies as well. But for how long would the church be master of its own affairs? Time was of the essence. For the church, the most urgent priority was to continue to appoint local leaders. Though Ignatius Kung Pinmei had been named bishop of Suzhou, Riberi’s July 1949 letter said nothing about a new bishop for the important Diocese of Shanghai. Therefore, a leadership vacuum remained in the Shanghai church. Had something gone wrong? Actually, it had: a careful reading of contemporary Catholic news reports shows that a Chinese priest, confusingly enough also surnamed Kung (Gong), had originally been offered the Shanghai bishopric. Joseph Kung Shirong was a priest of the Nanjing Archdiocese. He was from a well-connected family from Wuxi, and he had been a close associate of the powerful Archbishop Yu Pin of Nanjing, who probably acted as Kung’s “kingmaker.” Kung Shirong, knowing all too well the pressures he would face in his new job, declined the offer and chose to serve the rest of his priestly life on Taiwan. The anticipation came to an end on August 5, 1950, when Kung Pinmei was named bishop of the Shanghai Diocese. Eight days later, he was consecrated at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral. The fi rst bishop of the recently erected Shanghai Diocese was a native son. Shanghai Catholics were jubilant. They referred to him not as the bishop but as our bishop.78 From the start, the burden on Kung was heavy. In the absence of any other candidates, he was asked to continue administrating the Suzhou Diocese as well. And since Archbishop Yu Pin had left the country— because of his close ties with the Nationalists—Kung would in time administrate the Nanjing Archdiocese as well. Within a year and a half, Kung went from being a simple parish priest and school principal to being one of the most important Catholic churchmen remaining in China. Undaunted, the new bishop set to work right away. One of his fi rst acts was to reconstitute his staff. Then, on October 7, he published his fi rst pastoral letter.79 Kung noted that the diocese had turned a new page in its history when he was named bishop. With pride, he mentioned the strengths of the diocese. The administration was now largely in diocesan hands. Its glorious past made it one of the greatest dioceses in all of China. It had great churches and the pilgrimage site of Our Lady of Sheshan (Zosé), Queen of China. There was also an “efflorescence” of seminaries and schools, and the diocese had many pious associations of lay Catholics as well. Finally, it had a solid Jesuit-trained clergy. The 43

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strength of the Shanghai Diocese was, in fact, the fruit of 350 years of continuous apostolic activity. In this letter, Kung also outlined his program. He called for a closer collaboration between clergy and faithful. Together, they were to pursue the task of evangelization. The Shanghai faithful had proven their mettle for having kept the faith alive during periods of persecution; now they were to spread the faith to their compatriots as well. The various pious associations would play a crucial role in this important endeavor. Kung also called for an increase in religious vocations, vocations that had always sprung readily from families where there was a strong “atmosphere of faith.” Finally, he underscored Chinese Catholics’ traditional devotion to the Virgin Mary, assuring them that, from the beginning, the diocese had been under her maternal care. For Kung, a key goal was to get rid of divisions, both those that already existed and those that could be exploited in the future. Unity was essential. Previously, there had been some tensions between the Jesuits and the diocesan clergy, as well as between foreign and Chinese clergy.80 With Kung’s nomination, control of the diocese and its institutions technically went from the French Jesuits, whose mission it had been, to the Shanghai Diocese and the Chinese diocesan priests. From the start, the Jesuits decided to make it easy for the new bishop. Eric Hanson explains: The Chinese priests were ready to fight for an equitable division of church property. In reply to Kung’s question about what properties the Jesuits would give the Chinese diocese, Lacretelle replied that they could have any they wished, including the prestigious Zicawei [Xujiahui] compound and Zose [Sheshan] shrine. The diocese did not accept the properties because of staffi ng difficulties, but Lacretelle’s offer improved foreign-Chinese relations immensely.81 The Jesuits had shown enormous goodwill in their offer. For the time being, the unity of the diocese would remain intact. (Such generosity was not universal in the church. During the same period, French Vincentian priests refused to cede their properties to the Beijing Archdiocese.)82 Years later, the CCP would offer its own reading of these same events: After July 1950, they [the Jesuits] superficially removed themselves from diocesan leadership, but, in fact, church leadership remained in Jesuit hands. Whenever the bishop had a problem, he had to consult with the Jesuits, and only then could he make a decision. 44

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Therefore, the Jesuits are the backbone of the Shanghai Catholic reactionary force. They are also the core strength from which counterrevolutionary activities are carried out unstintingly.83

Catholic Religious Revival Kung’s October pastoral letter had both noted and called for an “efflorescence” of Catholic life. Unlike the Catholic renascence that occurred immediately after World War II—which had been largely juridical and structural—now something deeper was going on, a religious revival in fact. Paradoxically, and for the time being, there seemed to be just the right combination of freedom and pressure in Shanghai to cause Catholic life to flourish. Church leaders knew that with too much liberty, the church could grow complacent, but under overwhelming pressure, it might buckle. Thus, the Shanghai Diocese faced both pressures and possibilities. On the one hand, the churches remained, religious personnel were allowed to stay at their posts, priests were being ordained, and Shanghai had a new bishop. On the other hand, as noted, taxes were high, church schools were appropriated, and missionaries were circumscribed in their movements. Ironically, some pressures worked to the church’s advantage. The CCP had eliminated many of the distractions that had previously kept Shanghai Catholics from church: gambling, travel, and movies. However, Catholics also knew that the CCP might soon take away their churches and imprison their priests as well. In this tense environment, Catholics learned to not take their faith for granted. These were uncertain times, and Catholics turned to the certitude of the faith. The facts are revealing. For example, Christ the King Parish historically catered to Portuguese businessmen—“go-betweens” who were conversant in both Chinese and English. In August 1949, McCarthy wrote that, as businesses closed and foreigners left, “[t]he percentage of Chinese who attend the church [had] grown rapidly,” and they were “wonderfully fervent in frequenting the Sacraments, attending daily Mass, and in doing what they [could] to support the parish.”84 The Catholic revival continued, and sixteen months later, McCarthy wrote: “The big lines of Catholic activity now are: intensified spiritual life of all the faithful, fuller participation of the laity in teaching the young and winning converts, and cultivation of native vocations to make up for the foreigners who won’t be admitted.”85 Again, there was 45

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the right balance between pressure and freedom to create an “efflorescence” of religious activity. Bishop Kung himself was instrumental in this Catholic revival. From the beginning, he was a whirlwind of apostolic activity and strengthened by his strong devotion to Mary. On August 15, just two days after his consecration, he celebrated a Pontifical High Mass for the feast of Mary’s Assumption.86 A month later, he urged the faithful to pray for the speedy canonization of the Suzhou martyrs of 1748.87 And at the end of October, in conjunction with Pope Pius XII’s proclamation of the dogma of Mary’s Assumption into heaven, Kung permitted the celebration of midnight Mass in Shanghai’s churches.88 In fact, accounts of the time attest that the young bishop was present at nearly every major ecclesiastical function in the diocese. Day after day, he presided over or attended Masses, recitations of the rosary, benedictions, religious lectures, and pilgrimages. The cycle of religious events would be repeated—time and again— for other important religious holidays. Christmas 1950 showed no let up. There was a “torchlight procession” before Christmas Eve Mass at Aurora University, and St. Ignatius in Xujiahui registered more than four thousand communions for the Christmas Masses.89 Further, the faith continued to attract. Fifty adults were baptized at St. Peter’s Parish on Christmas day.90 In sum, Catholic spiritual and devotional life was flourishing, attractive, and public.

The “Catholic Youth”: The Marian Sodalities and the Legion of Mary In his October pastoral letter, Bishop Kung had noted the long history of pious associations among Shanghai Catholics. In fact, building strong associations was now becoming more important than saving institutions. Catholic schools were being nationalized, and Catholic doctrine was being replaced by Marxist indoctrination, even in the formerly Catholic schools. In this climate, young Catholics might succumb and abandon the faith, and the future of the church be lost. The church needed to mobilize young Catholics. In fact, Jean Lefeuvre, a young French Jesuit seminarian, active in Shanghai at the time, would eventually write a popular book recalling the “magnificent resistance” of Catholic Shanghai. The youth’s role in this resistance was singular. This was no “accident,” but was the result of years of missionary 46

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efforts to “not only baptize but to form personalities and educate a vigorous Catholic youth.”91 For Lefeuvre, a well-trained Catholic youth was vital to Catholic success. They were to become the backbone of the church militant. Two particular associations were fast mobilizing Shanghai’s Catholics, especially the youth: the Marian Sodalities (Shengmuhui) and the Legion of Mary (Shengmujun). “Catholic Youth” (Gongjiao Qingnian, or Gongqing for short) soon became an umbrella term—used by Communists and Catholics alike—for Sodalists, Legionaries, and for all committed young Catholics in the diocese. In time, they numbered one thousand and more, two thousand if the elementary students were included. At key events, they could mobilize 2,500 students. First, then, the Marian Sodalities, also known as the Marian Congregations. The Sodalities were originally founded by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century as a way of schooling laypeople in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. The fi rst Jesuit missionaries to the Shanghai region brought the Sodalities with them.92 By 1949, however, they had fallen into desuetude, at least among Shanghai’s Catholic youth. In response, Beda Chang sought to reanimate the Sodalities at St. Ignatius High School. They were perhaps the best way for laypeople to absorb the spirit of the Jesuits. In fact, the Jesuits had been “founded chiefly . . . for the defense and propagation of the faith,” noted the 1550 Formula of the Institute.93 The hope was that in the current atmosphere—where attacks on the faith were multiplying—the youth would also learn how to “defend and propagate” the faith. The second major movement was the Legion of Mary. It was none other than Archbishop Anthony Riberi, the Vatican internuncio, who actively encouraged the Legion. He was convinced by the Legion’s methods, and he wanted the whole church to support the movement. The Legion of Mary was an international Catholic organization, founded in Ireland in 1921, and marked by a deep devotion to the Virgin Mary.94 For several years Frank Duff, a Catholic layman, had gathered a small group in Dublin to make a weekly report on their “reclamation” work among the most marginalized of society. In time, Duff read Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary, an intensely devotional work on the Blessed Virgin, and the group decided to make her the center of their activity. On September 7, 1921, they did just that. Sixteen laypeople and a priest held a special meeting around a table on which was placed a statue of Mary flanked by flowers and candles. It 47

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was here that they showed their devotion to Mary, Mother of God, by making an “enrolment” to her. The basic features of this fi rst meeting would in time mark every meeting of what later became the Legion of Mary. In fact, Legionaries would come to see the very date of their fi rst meeting to be providential: the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. This fortuitous occurrence further linked the Legion with Mary, since it was “realized not the least exquisite touch of Mary’s hand had been shown in the moment of the Legion’s birth.”95 By 1928 the group that began “spontaneously” produced its fi rst handbook with fi xed “rules and practices.”96 The opening lines of the The Official Handbook of the Legion of Mary distills the purpose of the Legion: The Legion of Mary is an Association of Catholics, who, with the sanction of the Church and under the powerful leadership of Mary Immaculate, Mediatrix of all Graces (who is fair as the moon, bright as the sun and—to Satan and his legionaries—terrible as an army set in battle array), have formed themselves into a Legion for service in the warfare which is perpetually waged by the Church against the world and its evil powers. The Legionaries hope to render themselves worthy of their great heavenly Queen by their loyalty, their virtues, and their courage. The Legion of Mary is therefore organized on the model of an army, principally on that of the army of ancient Rome, the nomenclature of which is adopted also—but the army and the arms of Legionaries of Mary are not of this world.97 What kind of theology gave rise to the Legion? It was a theology passionately focused on the exalted role of Mary, Mother of God, especially under her title of Mary Immaculate. Remember that Mary herself told the children at Fatima in 1917 to establish devotion to her Immaculate Heart; her Immaculate Heart was just the purest symbol of Mary Immaculate. In fact, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was fi rst proclaimed in 1870. This dogma held that Mary herself was sinless from the moment of her conception. Being sinless, she was never in the grip of Satan. She was, in fact, the principal enemy of Satan, who was symbolized by the serpent. In fact, the statue of Mary used at Legion meetings shows Mary with angelic face and opened palms, her feet crushing the head of the serpent. Mary, then, was refuge for sinners and mortal enemy of Satan. 48

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In fact, even theologians in the fi rst centuries of Christianity had seen Mary’s exalted role as enemy of Satan prophesied in Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: She shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” This passage is called the protoevangelium—the fi rst mention of the “good news” of redemption—because although the serpent tempted Adam to fall, ushering in original sin, there was already hope of man’s future salvation. The Legion’s Handbook understands these words with razorsharp literality: the “woman” was none other than Mary, and the words were “addressed to Satan by Almighty God.”98 Through the woman, then, a redeemer would come to save the human race from sin. It was a “pledge of victory” over sin.99 Mary’s combat against Satan was not ethereal, but real. And Legionaries would assist Mary in her combat against Satan. Indeed, the drama had apocalyptic implications—and the fight, up close and personal. Even so, Legionaries insisted that their combat with Satan was strictly spiritual. The Legion did not deal with the material or political aspects of life. First, Legionaries were never to give direct material relief either as Legionaries or as private individuals.100 In fact, many Legionaries themselves were of modest means. Second, the Legion was not political. Cardinal point 22 stated that “[n]o Legionary body shall allow its influence or its premises to be used for any political purpose or to aid any political party.”101 It was a wise warning given Ireland’s recent struggle with Britain. The Handbook gave the following concrete suggestions for work: visiting hospitals, homes, lodging houses, and jails; spreading devotions; assisting in the parish census; disseminating Catholic literature; working for the young; teaching catechism; and converting others to the Catholic faith. In fact, the heart and soul of the Legionary movement was the home visitation. Because during these visits Legionaries might come into contact with the “seamy” side of life, what was discussed at Legion meetings was strictly confidential.102 Even though the Legion would protest that it was apolitical, the “secret” nature of Legion meetings would later be profoundly misunderstood by the CCP. For its fi rst six years, the Legion remained only in the Dublin Diocese. Then, in 1927, blessed with a “Pentecostal wind,” the Legion “began to invade all the Irish Dioceses.”103 It was now becoming a “considerable” army.104 The Legion fi rst went to China with the Irish Columban missionaries, and Father Aedan McGrath defi nitively established it in Hanyang by 49

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January of 1937. The Japanese invasion interrupted his work. But when McGrath returned to the mission, he found that the Legion had continued its weekly meetings and apostolic work.105 This impressed McGrath: “Under the most trying circumstances, the Legionaries behave[d] splendidly in every way.”106 The Legion in China had proven its mettle. The Legion had its second stroke of good luck when, in 1946, Riberi was reassigned from Africa to China to be its new Vatican internuncio. Riberi was already familiar with the Legion in Africa through the work of Edel Quinn, an Irish Legionary and lay missionary. As such, Riberi was completely convinced of the efficacy of the Legion. At a plenary gathering of the bishops of China, Riberi “proposed the Legion as an ideal form of the lay apostolate which they should officially propagate through all China.”107 The proposal was unanimously accepted. So strong was Riberi’s support that in the preface to the Chinese version of the Handbook, he said calling the Legion “a miracle of the modern world is not surprising. It has spread to nearly all the nations with extraordinary speed.”108 Riberi knew that the Legion could mobilize “native Christians in the work of evangelizing their pagan fellow countrymen. Indeed, other than in such a mobilization, there is no hope of converting China.”109 Dependent too long on foreigners and missionaries, the church had best awaken the sleeping dragon of China’s Catholic laity. To this end, Riberi personally sent McGrath to study the Legion organization in Dublin. His only mission would be to reproduce in China what Edel Quinn had so successfully done in Africa.110 Aedan McGrath thus became the national envoy for the Legion in China. McGrath was given an office at the Catholic Central Bureau (CCB) in Shanghai in 1948. From there he would travel throughout China animating new praesidia (groups) of the Legion. With the active encouragement of Riberi, the Legion in Shanghai grew rapidly between 1948 and 1951, especially among young women, even despite protests from within the church. As a young Legionary, Philomena Hsieh (Xie) would hear statements like, “We already have many lay Catholic organizations doing similar work. After all, what can those high school boys and girls accomplish?”111 But the young Legionaries had the blessing of Bishop Kung. McGrath began the fi rst Legion group in Shanghai at the Columban parish in late 1947.112 But he had his greatest success at Aurora College for Women and Aurora Middle School for girls, institutions administered by an order of women religious, the Madams of the Sacred Heart. 50

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McGrath began recruiting there in early 1948 by speaking to large school assemblies. He spoke of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, and of the Legion as a “spiritual army.” As a result, the Legion quickly grew at Aurora. Some estimate that up to 90 percent of the Catholic students there became Legionaries.113 There were soon fully six praesidia at Aurora College for Women alone, numbering up to twenty members each. Young Chinese women from Aurora formed the backbone of the Legion. A popular saying among Legionaries held that “[t]he whole country looked to Shanghai and Shanghai looked to Aurora.”114 In fact, Philomena Hsieh would proudly state that “[t]he Legion of Mary carried the flag as a ‘Do or Die’ corps leading the Church.”115 By the time Hsieh attended the prestigious Anglican-run St. John’s University in Shanghai, she was a member of three different praesidia. With such dedication, the Legion expanded in both the schools and the parishes. Concrete numbers are hard to come by, but by 1950, there were ten Legion praesidia in the parishes and twenty in the schools, from Aurora University to the middle schools. By the following year, there were perhaps up to 1,500 senior and junior Legionaries in Shanghai, young and old, foreign and Chinese. However, the roughly four hundred to five hundred Chinese students, many of them women, were its most courageous members. With the growth of both the Marian Sodalities and the Legion of Mary, the church was aware of a problem: the two groups could easily become rivals, animated, as they were, by different spiritualities. Tensions could also erupt between their respective patrons: the Jesuits and Archbishop Riberi. The evidence comes from the “Notations sur l’Eglise de Shanghai (supplément),” a confidential church document, which internal evidence seems to confi rm was written in 1952, that described the “heroic resistance” of the Shanghai church and its strategies of survival.116 The document candidly states that Jesuits did not create “Legions.” In fact, some Jesuits thought that, with its “numerous and detailed rules,” the Legion was not well adapted to the Chinese context.117 Yet Archbishop Riberi continued to stand by the Legion. In fact, he “wanted to consolidate all the Chinese ‘Catholic Youth’ into one body.”118 Out of deference to Riberi, some foreign Jesuits were allowed to direct several groups of Legionaries. For the time being, however, Chinese Jesuits were told not to direct any Legion groups.119 It was too risky a proposition for them to direct a group with such obvious foreign ties. With the apparent blessing of Bishop Kung, they were to continue 51

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to revivify the Sodalities. The solution, then: both movements were to flourish together. At the same time the Legion was growing and the Sodalities were coming back to life, a leadership team of about eight Shanghai Jesuits headed by Beda Chang was formed. This Shanghai Jesuit leadership team was the pride of Catholic Shanghai. They were native born and highly educated; six of them had received advanced degrees from abroad. They were the ones responsible for trying to find creative ways to animate the mass of young Catholics in the city. To this end, by the summer of 1950 they organized a retreat movement. During these retreats, students learned how to strengthen their faith in difficult times. The students were expected to attend two three-day retreats each year. In time, two thousand students (split equally between elementary school students and their seniors) would be active members of this retreat movement. They saw themselves as a “fortress of fearless youths.”120 Catholics soon boasted of the similarities between CCP indoctrination and their own religious formation: “At the time when the Communist militants were attending very tough formative retreats, the Catholics were happy, for their part, to find new strength in a serious retreat.”121 The Catholic youth movement seemed to be intentionally paralleling the Communist youth leagues. The retreats proved quite successful. They even raised expectations, and the Shanghai Jesuit team soon faced the classic problem of “followup.”122 Therefore, in order to “prolong the influence of the retreats,” the Chinese Jesuits founded catechism groups (yaoli xiaozu), also referred to as doctrine study groups, in order to further harness the power of the retreats. Within a year, the catechism groups would be highly articulated and hierarchical. At the top of the hierarchy was the Shanghai Jesuit leadership team, which intensively educated and formed the division leaders, who were often Sodalists from Aurora. These division leaders would then each guide a group of team leaders who, in turn, would guide their respective teams. The teams themselves numbered from ten to twelve students each. In time, the catechism groups gained great depth and breadth. They were organized at nearly all Shanghai’s schools, both public and private, from the university to the elementary level. In addition, because many of Shanghai’s schools had upper, middle, and lower divisions, this facilitated communication between the various catechism groups. Further, because both Legionaries and Sodalists were allowed to join, rivalry between the groups was avoided. This was true even if the majority 52

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of leaders were Sodalists, who discretely directed the movement from behind the scenes. The weekly catechism group meetings were substantive and intense. They met for up to three and a half hours at a time—often from 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.—and included prayer, theological study, and reflection. They focused on such things as doctrinal and spiritual development and the refutation of Marxist theory and tactics. For example, students discussed how to respond to attacks made by current CCP campaigns, by “progressive” Catholics, and even by non-Catholic family members. As such, these meetings were the only consolation these embattled students might have during the entire week. The catechism groups had other special features. They were not to bring undue attention to themselves. In other words, they were to function under the radar. To this end, they had no special name, no constitution, and the barebones organization noted above. They had few assets, except that they would use mimeograph machines to publish and disseminate agendas and church documents. In this way, the catechism groups differentiated themselves from the Legion, which was more high-profile. Young Catholics also had the blessing of Bishop Kung, who “strongly believed that the Catholic youth were the hope and future of the Church.”123 The affection was mutual. At a reception at St. Ignatius High School on December 8, 1950, several hundred students gathered to meet “their father and their comrade at arms.”124 Kung told them, “God has given you to me so that I can guide you, but at the same time, he has given me to you so that you can sustain me.”125 The special relationship between the Catholic Youth and their bishop was cemented. As one might surmise, the CCP had a different view of the Catholic Youth and its relationship to Bishop Kung and his “clique.” By 1956, a confidential party document explained that Catholic leaders had used religion as a cover to poison young people from the families of the comprador, landlord, and bourgeois classes in anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, and anti-people thought, and organized these young people into the “Catholic Youth” [Gongqing] organization. They numbered about 1,000 people. [They] used the youth’s religious fanaticism, to serve as the mainstay to carry out counterrevolutionary activity.126 For the time being, the Catholic Youth could only wonder what the future might hold. 53

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CCP Religious Policy Hardens As late as mid-1950, Catholic life in Shanghai was difficult but not unbearable. Although the church was stripped of some important assets, it compensated in other areas. It not only had a vigorous and growing youth organization under the direction of Beda Chang, but its new bishop was a native son. Also, it seemed possible that the atmosphere of limited religious freedom might continue for some time. But it was not meant to be. The uneasy coexistence between the Shanghai Catholic community and the CCP was shattered on June 25, 1950, when the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea. The tenor in China immediately changed. When the United Nations decided to intervene, there was a progressive hardening of attitudes within China. In late summer, China mobilized its own troops. Then, beginning in October, three hundred thousand Chinese “volunteers” secretly crossed into North Korea in order to aid their ally. And so, just a year after its establishment, the People’s Republic of China was at war with the combined forces of the United Nations. Historians are divided over the role the Korean War played in the CCP’s domestic policies. Whereas some hold that the war forced China further into the Soviet orbit, others hold that the war provided the perfect cover for the CCP to effect a more complete cultural transformation of the country, plans that had been drawn up long before. The party had already articulated its long-term policies; the Korean War allowed for an accelerated implementation of these policies. The CCP knew that not everyone who disagreed with its goals of complete social transformation was counterrevolutionary. Further, the party could use all the friends it could muster in the showdown on the Korean peninsula. It was thus a perfect time to employ the tried-and-true united front strategy. The party organ responsible for implementing the united front was the United Front Work Department (UFWD), “a highly secretive organization that oversaw the delicate relationship between the CCP” and non-Communist groups.127 Thus, in order to mobilize mass support for the war, the UFWD gave birth to a new political movement: the Resist America, Aid Korea (RA-AK) Movement. This movement mobilized support for the war effort by organizing parades and rallies throughout the country. The CCP also knew it was in a delicate position vis-à-vis the churches. There were still thousands of foreign missionaries in China, including those from France and the United States, two nations currently at war 54

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with China. Further, the CCP realized that Christians, especially urban Christians with foreign contacts, might form a dangerous fifth column. Thus, in the end, the CCP was not going to leave the churches alone, nor was it going to eradicate them overnight. Rather, for the time being, the UFWD and the Religious Affairs Bureau would co-opt the churches by mobilizing them in the war effort. Soon Chinese Christians were attending rallies in which American political leaders and church leaders were denounced and burned in effigy. For the churches, the three movements—Three-Self, RA-AK, and manifesto—soon blended together. A Xinhua News Agency dispatch of November 23 took its case to the Chinese masses.128 “What One Should Know about the Questions of Catholic and Protestant Religions” closely paralleled the July 23 “Instructions.” However, the current document contained a magisterial quotation from Mao’s “New Democracy.” We Communists can build up an anti-imperialist battle-front in conjunction with certain idealists and religious followers, but we must not approve of their idealism or religion. Therefore, we say that all patriots (including Christians) should observe this principle in dealing with the Catholic and Protestant churches: the freedom of religion must be protected, but religious bodies must be cleansed of all imperialist influences.129 Being “cleansed of all imperialist influences” meant that missionaries would soon be expelled from China. The strategy was successful; by the end of 1951, there were few missionaries left in China’s vast interior. Building up the “anti-imperialist battle-front” meant building up the TSPM. Already active in the Protestant churches for some months now, the Catholic Church could not remain aloof from this movement forever. On November 30, a Chinese priest in the remote region of Guangyuan, Sichuan Province, gathered together the signatures of five hundred Catholics and published the “Manifesto on Independence and Reform.” The Guangyuan Manifesto stated that Catholics should support the RA-AK Movement and should reform their church by severing links with the imperialists.130 Perhaps because of this document’s emphasis on independence and reform, the Three-Self Movement among Catholics was now also referred to—at least in the missionary press—as the independent church movement and the reformed church movement. Other manifestos followed suit, the most important being the Chongqing Manifesto that was published in January. It read, in part: 55

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[W]e now know that the originally immaculate Church is steeped in murderous blood. We Catholics have decided, for love of our country, to stand united and fi rm with the viewpoint of the People, to support the Common Program, to realize Self-government, Selfsupport, and Self-propagation of the Chinese Catholic Church, in order to strengthen the lasting peace of the world, and to fight for an independent, democratic, unified strong New China. . . . . We have to liquidate those elements in the Church who are so ready to serve imperialism, in order to delete all traces of imperialism. We must strive valiantly to realize this aim of renewal in the shortest period of time.131 Then the pressure was stepped up. At RA-AK mass meetings, slogans were directed against missionaries. Effigies of the pope were burned. Catholics felt betrayed. First, they discovered that many of the signatures on the manifestos were either false or were obtained through deception. Second, combining the RA-AK with the Three-Self Movement only created ill will. Catholics were fi rst asked to show patriotism, then they had to “reform” their church by purging it of “imperialist influences,” and then they were pressured to break ties with the pope. In short, the CCP was trying to use patriotism as a wedge to split the “indivisible” church. Catholics, for their part, felt the litmus test was not their patriotism but their links with the universal church—their catholicity. For Catholics, the indivisibility of the church was fast becoming more than a private belief without consequences; indeed, it was now a public belief that kept them united with the universal church. Catholic belief mattered, not because it was privately held, but because it was publicly practiced. Soon many Catholics saw the Three-Self Movement for what it was: a direct attack on their church. The church needed to respond. Even before Christmas, Riberi wrote a letter to all the bishops lamenting the “cruel war between the powers of good and evil.”132 He then applauded the priests who “with fearless courage proclaim the indissoluble and essential bond of union which joins every Catholic with Christ and the Supreme Pontiff (“Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia,” where [Peter] is, there is the Church).”133 It was essential that Catholics remain united with the pope. In response, and perhaps to quell fears, on January 17, 1951, Zhou Enlai held a two-hour meeting with Catholic representatives.134 He praised the work of the Catholic Church and its missionaries and “indicated a clear understanding of the Catholics’ necessity to adhere to 56

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Rome in all spiritual matters.”135 After the meeting, Catholics attempted to have their own “patriotic” manifesto published that would clearly state the Catholic point of view. These attempts were frustrated, as were attempts to have Zhou’s speech published.136 Catholics were thus unable to have their opinions voiced in the national press. Because of this, Father Matthew Chen Zhemin, Riberi’s Chinese language secretary and a staff member of the Catholic Central Bureau, drafted a response: The Church: Holy and Catholic.137 (The response was later compiled with other articles into a pamphlet titled Xuexi cankao [Study reference].)138 The article began as follows: The Catholic religion was established by Jesus Christ Himself, coming down to us from the Apostles, one, holy and Catholic; one body, like unto the human body, with Jesus’ own representative—the Holy Father—as its head, it is super-political, indivisible by national boundaries or political differences. This is the very nature of the Catholic Church, and to mutilate this nature is to cease to be Catholic. It follows, therefore, that Catholics of any district who because of peculiar circumstances willingly separate themselves from the Holy See, also separate themselves from Jesus and from the Catholic Church. Any so-called “national Catholic church,” in an exclusive sense, is simply a schismatic church, and not the true and one Catholic Church.139 Chen Zhemin had clearly stated the Catholic position: the church was one and indivisible. He then gave the church’s interpretation of the three-selfs. Self-government meant “the gradual assumption of control of religious affairs by native bishops according to the ecclesiastical regulations, and the establishment of a native hierarchy;” self-support meant “the non-acceptance of any subsidy having political implications from foreign or home countries;” and self-propagation meant “that foreign missionaries will propagate the faith in the interests of local churches and not work for the interests of foreigners” according to his document.140 These, then, were the true three-selfs. The government response was equally swift.141 On February 19, the People’s Daily branded the work an “American imperialist attempt to sabotage the patriotic reform movement of religious circles.”142 CCP policy was clearly hardening. For their part, Chinese Catholics were patriotic, but they resisted the narrow way in which the government was defi ning patriotism. They did not want to resist the government, but 57

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the regime was encroaching more and more on their religious liberties. Despite these attacks on the church, some Catholics still sought a way to work with the new regime. One such person was a young Jesuit named Louis Jin Luxian. Jin had just arrived back in Shanghai in February 1951 with his freshly minted doctorate from the Gregorian in Rome. In the same month, he met with Bishop Kung and Bishop Simon Zhu Kaimin. He gave them his candid assessment: no new missionaries would be allowed in China, the remaining missionaries would be expelled, and most shocking, Communism was here to stay. Therefore, he told them, the Chinese church had to take responsibility for itself. It was time, he warned, to call the Catholic bishops together to fi nd a modus vivendi with the new regime. For these radical views, Jin was held suspect, especially by Riberi who later found out about the conversation.143 Riberi himself continued to work under a great deal of pressure, for the manifesto movement now moved to his home territory, to Nanjing, the former KMT capital. Riberi remained there—refusing to leave China—and waited to be accredited to the new government. That was not forthcoming. Instead, the CCP had other plans. And so, under Riberi’s watch and without his knowledge, on March 31 the newspapers published a Nanjing Manifesto. Like the other manifestos, it called on Catholics to separate from the Vatican. There was a further complication: it was signed by the vicar general, the priest who, in the absence of Archbishop Yu Pin, governed the archdiocese. Riberi was furious. On the same day, Riberi wrote a letter to all the bishops in China denouncing the most recent manifesto. He followed it with an even stronger letter on April 25 that exhorted them to remain fi rm under pressure. For its part, on May 24 the People’s Daily ran a copy of Riberi’s March letter.144 It accused him of sabotaging the movement. The headline said it all: “Such things cannot be tolerated at all.” Riberi was an “imperialist” who was “an enemy of the patriotic Catholics and the people’s government.”145 The irony was that Riberi was actually from Monaco, hardly an imperialist power, but the label stuck. Riberi had offended the regime. He had to go.

The Catholic Schools and the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries The manifesto movement had so far failed to woo Shanghai Catholics. In the meantime, both the church and the party made every effort to appeal 58

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to the hearts and minds of the youth, and ideological battles took place in the Catholic—and formerly Catholic—schools. The CCP stepped up the pressure by bringing the RA-AK Movement and the related ThreeSelf Movement into these schools. In fact, the storm had been gathering in the schools for some time. By late summer of 1950, the CCP had already begun recruiting student “volunteers” for Korea. “Night after night” there were “patriotic” rallies at St. Ignatius High School.146 It was an awkward experience for Shanghai’s priests, especially the American priests. While John Clifford was still living at the Jesuit seminary next door to the high school, “many students came to [him] and to the other priests seeking counsel.” They said they did not fear an American invasion and did not want to participate in a war to impose on the Korean people the communist system which they themselves opposed. Talking with innuendo and suggestion, the only prudent approach in a period filled with informers, we advised them to stand on their rights and continue their studies. Some of the young idealists were troubled by the moral problem of warfare, and these were reminded that no one should voluntarily bear arms in an unjust war.147 Beda Chang, articulator of the “central position” and principal of St. Ignatius, where the rallies were now held, was also increasingly under pressure. So far his “central position” had worked. Yet the pressure mounted as the government pressed on with the recruitment of Korean “volunteers.” Chang and other Jesuits had left the recruitment of the Korean “volunteers” to the school’s political instructors. Some party members might construe this as noncompliance with and, at worst, outright obstruction of party directives. Party cadres plotted their moves. At a December send-off ceremony for the Korean “volunteers,” a young CCP cadre planned to attack Chang for blocking the volunteer movement. Chang spoke first. He congratulated all the youth who had volunteered for Korea. Remarkably, they had done this by their own free will, for he had not persuaded them to volunteer. Chang had maneuvered deftly.148 But in time, “skillful evasions” gave way to more “serious conflict.”149 On February 20, 1951, the East China Education and Cultural Department called together the directors of private secondary schools. Among the five Catholic representatives was Beda Chang. By the end of the meeting, a motion was proposed that the Catholics should promote the ThreeSelf Movement. In good conscience, the Catholics could not support this 59

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motion. An argument ensued. Chang defended the church’s record. He spoke of the deep patriotism of Catholics. He spoke of the Catholic Brigade in the recent war against Japan, and of the charitable works of the church. “Our love for our country springs from what is deepest in our Catholicism: our love of God.”150 Because of these and other speeches, the Catholic representatives refused to accept the motion supporting the Three-Self Movement. It would put them into schism with the universal church, they argued, and destroy the “indefectible” unity of their church. This resistance led to the fi rst arrests in the Shanghai Catholic community.151 On February 28, 1951, Ye Mingren, a Salesian brother who had attended the meeting, was perhaps the fi rst Catholic leader to be arrested in Shanghai. As for Beda Chang, a scant few months later, a list of his ten crimes was posted on school property. CCP cadres agitated for his removal as principal. Under pressure, Chang had no choice but to step down. He moved to another Jesuit residence nearby. Soon St. Ignatius High School itself was confiscated outright. The pressure continued at other schools as well, especially at Aurora University. Aurora was the first of three Catholic universities in China and, as such, had a distinguished one-hundred-year history. It was the pride of Catholic Shanghai. In fact, one of its founders had been Ma Xiangbo himself, the former Jesuit priest. Even the regime hailed him as a “Catholic patriot.” It could now do so safely, for Ma had died ten years before the CCP took Shanghai. As for Aurora itself, nearly 200 of its 775 students were Catholics. Many of them were the elite of the Catholic Youth. In the fall of 1950, elections were held for the student government. In many universities throughout China, the CCP-inspired New Democratic Youth quickly won the majority of the seats. In Aurora, it was different. The Catholic students mobilized their forces and beat the Communist candidates in an open election. It was a major loss of face for the CCP that it would not soon forget. The CCP soon decided that it was time to take control of Aurora.152 On January 18, 1951, representatives from the twenty foreign-financed colleges and universities still operating in China met in Beijing. One of Aurora’s two representatives was Hu Wenyao. He was an enigmatic figure. A longtime administrator at the school, Hu had only recently converted to Catholicism. Some said he did so simply to please Bishop Haouisée, with whom he had a long association in the past.153 After all, his son was already a member of the Communist Party, and Hu himself “later admitted that he had never believed.”154 It was Hu Wenyao who 60

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had warned the CCP about Beda Chang: “If you cannot dispose of Beda Chang, all your efforts will come to nothing, for he will foil all your maneuvers.”155 At the meeting, Ma Shulun, the minister of education, stated that private institutions would be nationalized. He labeled Aurora reactionary and put Hu on notice. Hu later buckled under the pressure. In addition, Yang Shida, an “apostate” in the eyes of many Catholics, was made the new dean. By March, the takeover of the administration was complete. Jesuits were barred from teaching, and 120 “progressive” students were sent to Aurora to prevent the priests from destroying documents or taking property from the university.156 For their efforts, by September, both Hu Wenyao and Yang Shida were made chair and vice chair of the Shanghai Catholic RA-AK Working Group. Members of this group like Hu were called “puppets” by fellow Catholics. Other members were simply from “renowned” Catholic families who, by compromising, “wished to make things easier for the Church.”157 While the confiscation of the schools was proceeding, on February 20, 1951, the “Regulations for the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries” was promulgated.158 Trying to overthrow the regime was a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment. The regulations were effective immediately and served for years afterwards as China’s sole criminal code. The Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement had begun.159 The order was implemented in Shanghai—with lightning speed—on April 27, 1951. Some people had already “been shadowed for weeks by thousands of special government agents and military and regular police.”160 Then, on that night, the terror spread as bright red trucks—called dahongbao, or “big red envelopes” by the local populace—and their sirens screamed for hours throughout Shanghai’s streets. By the time it was over, up to twenty thousand people had been arrested. There were also mass accusation meetings, often led by vice mayor Pan Hannian and director of the PSB Yang Fan. The Liberation Daily and the Xinhua News Agency claimed that over half of Shanghai’s population took part in these meetings. Then the executions began. Lasting for hours, they mainly took place at the Shanghai Race Track. Even young children were present to sing songs, praising the attacks on the counterrevolutionaries. The momentum would build, and then the crowds would yell “Kneel down!” The victims would then be abruptly shot. It is hard to estimate how many were killed throughout the country in the brutal campaign. They vary from a high estimate made in Taiwan of two million to Frederick Teiwes’s estimate of five hundred thousand to 61

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eight hundred thousand, with another half million suicides.161 In Shanghai alone, CCP officials stated that there were at least one thousand executions. In this atmosphere of terror, three leaders of the Catholic Youth were arrested at Aurora University. Some of their fellow students attacked them, but the majority of them refused to do so. The CCP also arrested a Jesuit, the first one in Shanghai to be imprisoned by the regime.162 Francis Théry was a professor of Chinese law and a legal advisor to the Catholic Central Bureau. He was charged with espionage.163 The CCP seemed especially threatened by his criticisms of the arbitrary nature of CCP law.164 Ominously, the PSB tried to force Théry to become an informer. Théry later reported that on June 22, the last day of the fi rst set of interrogations, he was told, “Your life is in danger, if you do not become an informant of the Government.”165 He refused and remained in prison. Théry’s report gives the fi rst concrete evidence that the CCP was attempting to infiltrate a Catholic organization—namely, the Catholic Central Bureau—with a mole. The Aurora Jesuit community had originally housed about thirty Jesuits. These men were forced to vacate on July 15. On the previous day, they celebrated their fi nal Mass on school grounds. Some students wept openly. The remaining Jesuits were then discharged by the new administration, and their departments were dissolved. By this point, many Aurora Jesuits, some of them never fully fluent in Shanghaiese—having always lectured in French—were at a loss. Some became professors at one of Shanghai’s seminaries, and the remainder left China altogether to do mission work elsewhere. Three Jesuits decided to rent an apartment nearby and continue as spiritual directors to their former students, the vanguard of the Catholic Youth. Aurora was no longer in Jesuit hands. Meanwhile, the confiscation of other Catholic schools continued apace. With the increasing exit of foreigners, even Catholic schools which had catered primarily to the expatriate community, closed as well. Soon the only remaining Catholic schools in Shanghai were the seminaries.

Catholic Reassertion and the Special Militants In this atmosphere of increasing pressure and outright terror, it was imperative that the church not be paralyzed by fear. Catholic leaders searched for various ways to respond. 62

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First, Bishop Kung wrote a pastoral letter to his flock on April 22, 1951, just days before the Shanghai arrests. He was going to consecrate the whole diocese to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on June 24 at the cathedral.166 In preparation, he urged Catholics to flee to Mary for protection and to declare “their intention to live the way of life wished for by Mary their Mother.”167 He then outlined a clear spiritual plan of life obliged by the consecration: (1) daily recitation of the five decades of the rosary in the family, (2) a daily act of renunciation for reparation of sins, and (3) attendance at Mass and communion in Mary’s honor every fi rst Saturday of the month. He then gave pointers to help strengthen the faith. During the recitation of the rosary, families should also include a daily lesson of the Christian doctrine that the rosary explains. In this way, the faith would be passed down through the family. As a result of this “assiduous practice,” there would be “a strong interior unity” among Catholic families.168 In this program, then, Catholics were bringing all their spiritual resources to bear. The reference to the Immaculate Heart of Mary should have been lost on nobody, including astute CCP cadres. Bishop Kung was calling for the implementation of Mary’s desires made over forty years before at Fatima. It was there that she asked the faithful to be consecrated to her heart in order to stop Russia from spreading her errors. And with more Soviet advisers pouring into China by the day, Mary’s words, to many Catholics, seemed prescient. Second, the Catholic Youth was reorganized. The arrests of the three leaders at Aurora had exposed their vulnerabilities. In response, the Catholic Youth learned to counter, and perhaps even anticipate, the now incessant government campaigns. According to the confidential “Notations,” the catechism groups became more adaptable and more strictly coordinated, “invisible and mobile, dispersed but centralized.”169 For example, the document tells us that as each new CCP campaign was announced, the Shanghai Jesuit team would gather to decide the proper course of action. If the issues raised were especially difficult, the leadership team would consult with the bishop, the canon lawyers, and their superiors. The directives would then be disseminated down the catechism group chain of command from the leading priests to the division leaders, from them to the team leaders, and fi nally to each and every catechism group in the city. In this way, the Catholic Youth would be mobilized in “defense of the faith.” Further, the priests made every effort to attend those catechism group meetings for which they were 63

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directly responsible. They did so in order to teach proper doctrine and to have direct contact with their charges on a weekly basis. Sometimes these priests would attend up to six meetings a day. They were literally being crushed with work. In addition, the Catholic Youth continued to attend their three-day retreats twice a year, and even monthly days of recollection as well. In the current climate, the Catholic Youth also developed one of their most unique features: the “special militants.” With increased police surveillance, it was difficult for priests to make pastoral visits without compromising the faithful. As the regime’s eyes and ears multiplied throughout the city, Catholics risked harassment and interrogation every time a priest visited them. In fact, as early as 1951, CCP cadres started “fishing with a long line.” In other words, they were patiently trying to infiltrate the catechism groups early on, hoping their efforts would bear results later. In at least one case that same year, a spy tried to infi ltrate one of the groups through the false pretense of claiming that he had a priestly vocation.170 Given these developments, the Catholic Youth movement needed to adapt. The “Notations” state that despite the flexibility of the catechism groups, the rapidity with which they transmitted instructions, and indeed their prudence, such a “mass movement” could not escape detection forever. In this risky atmosphere, the special militants were the answer. These militants were not to have any role in the larger movement. Indeed, they would extend the reach of the priests in a silent and discreet manner. It was dangerous work. To this end, only the elite of the Sodalists were recruited, those youth who were highly motivated and who could promise a deep level of commitment. By temperament, they were to be “wise and calm rather than excitable.” They existed for one purpose: the defense of the church. As a sign of their commitment, the special militants took four promises: to accept prison or death, to postpone marriage for the time being, to have a spiritual plan of life, and to accept all missions that would aid the church. In fact, according to the “Notations,” “often nothing would be possible without the hidden sacrifice of these young.”171 The special militants each had a one-to-one relationship with a priest who was their spiritual director. Secrecy was paramount. Special militants were known only to their spiritual director and not even to one another. Further, they were not to guess the identities of the other members. In fact, it would seem that the majority of Shanghai’s priests did not even know of their existence. Letters written by foreign missionaries—either 64

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by design or through ignorance—hardly make mention of these special militants. And even those who worked in the large “youth parishes” only knew what was absolutely necessary. Shrouded as they were in secrecy, I have not been able to estimate their numbers, although the same document notes that one priest recruited a large number of them. CCP documents would later count 250 “core” members of the Catholic Youth. It would appear that the special militants, with this type of compartmentalized knowledge and availability for special missions, adapted techniques once used by the clandestine CCP. They functioned as a vanguard. Indeed, Catholic special militants seem to have mirrored the very techniques of their enemies. In fact, the tactics of answering infiltration with infiltration, secrecy with secrecy, and ever-shifting tactics with ever-shifting tactics, seem to have been the brainchild of Beda Chang himself. Chang was long convinced that the KMT had lost the war because the CCP had penetrated the highest levels of the Nationalist army, and even sabotaged Chiang Kai-shek’s war plans.172 Records are sparse, but perhaps Chang was trying to model the special militants on those underground CCP cadres who had previously carried out such operations against the former government. Examples of the missions undertaken by Catholic special militants—at once swift and secret—will shortly become apparent. The third reassertion of Catholic power revolved around one priest, the “zealous” John Tung (Dong) Shizhi, a gifted specialist in tribal languages who worked at the CCB. He went to Chongqing to investigate fi rsthand the “schismatic” manifesto movement that seemed to be gathering force. On June 2, authorities there arranged a demonstration to petition for Riberi’s expulsion. Catholics gathered at the cathedral. One after another, priests gave speeches attacking Riberi. Then John Tung gave his address. The address, entitled “Liang quan qi mei” [To satisfy both sides], assailed the Three-Self Movement for trying to divide the indivisible church: “Today you want us to denounce the representative of the Pope, Archbishop Riberi, tomorrow you will ask us to denounce the representative of Christ Himself, the Pope, and the day after tomorrow why not ask us to denounce God Himself?”173 Tung deplored the fact that the church and the government could not reach an agreement. Looking out at the large crowd gathered in the cathedral, he testified, “All I can do is to offer up my integral soul to God and to the church, and my body to my country. . . . For those 65

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materialists who do not believe in the soul and who claim belief in the body only, logically speaking, they ought to be satisfied with my presentation!”174 He then reiterated his key point, “My only recourse,” he proclaimed, “is to offer up a divided entity, my soul on the one hand, and my body on the other, as a sacrificial atonement for the promotion of mutual understanding.”175 Tung’s argument was airtight. He would give his body to his country and his soul to the church. How could the government not be satisfied? As good materialists, they denied the existence of the soul. They would have their share with his body. But God would not be deprived of Tung’s soul. Less than a month later, early on the morning of July 2, while vesting to say Mass, Tung was seized by the Chongqing police. Because he worked at the CCB in Shanghai, and because of his uncompromising stand, his speech and the news of his disappearance spread rapidly among Shanghai Catholics. His speech lived on, but it was not clear what happened to Tung himself. Despite its bold reassertion of power, the church had shown itself vulnerable in some key areas. First, the institutional strength of the Catholic Church was fast turning into a major liability. And those institutions were not saving the day. Missionary self-recrimination raged in the pages of the China Missionary Bulletin. Articles noted the very successes of the CCP: “Communism is not investing capital in buildings, but lavishly bestows its resources on training propagandists. . . . they have built up an ideal, a purposeful living for the masses, a fanaticism in the hearts of the young and the old.”176 Then comes an important warning: “The Communist ‘liberation’ has not only stripped the church of many of its institutions; it has also given us pause to reflect on our own methods. If we plan for the future along the same lines as the past we are heading for another ‘failure.’”177 A second weakness plagued the church, for it was still too dependent on foreign money and personnel. It could be argued that the overreliance on foreign personnel had actually prevented the church from indigenizing more quickly. For despite its 350-year history, and despite an increasingly well-trained native clergy, the church in Shanghai was only beginning to shed its mission status. In fact, it was only after World War I, and in response to rising Asian nationalism, that the church began to cede more power to the local church.178 Even so, the majority of Shanghai’s priests were still foreigners, mainly French and American. These 66

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missionaries could be expelled at any time. In addition, the Shanghai Diocese had only been erected in 1946 and its fi rst native bishop only named in 1950. And even the native bishop, the “principled” and notably apolitical Kung, was highly dependent on advice from the foreign priests he trusted the most. Time and again, the CCP attacked the “foreign” nature of the Catholic Church. The great irony, of course, was that the CCP itself was not free of foreign ties. Despite its protestations of nationalism, at this early stage it was “leaning to the side” of its “big brother,” the Soviet Union. Yet it was the Catholic Church, the CCP argued, that was subservient to foreign interests. Years later the CCP would give its own narrative of the church’s putative link with foreign imperialism: After World War II and the success of the Anti-Japanese War, American influence gradually penetrated the Shanghai Catholic Church. First, through Riberi and Yu Pin’s organization, they established the Catholic Central Bureau and the reactionary organization the Legion of Mary. In addition, American Jesuits came to Shanghai and controlled both the seminaries and the important Christ the King Parish. The Maryknoll Bishop James Walsh was under the direction of the US State Department and had been living in Shanghai for a long period of time. These many indicators show that American influence was gradually growing in the Shanghai Catholic Church. Second, in the name of spiritual authority [shenquan], imperialist aggressive power not only fi rmly controlled the Shanghai Catholic Church through church finances and administration for a long period of time, it also trained a group of loyalists to foreign interests among the Chinese clergy and believers. When foreigners were forced to step behind the curtain and give up church leadership in July 1950, they purposely let their agent Kung Pinmei be their bishop, and progressively helped Kung organize a counterrevolutionary clique which only followed foreign orders.179 In retrospect, CCP strategy was clear. In order to clean out “imperialist aggressive power,” three named above would now be targeted: Riberi, the CCB, and the Legion of Mary. The battle lines were drawn. The attacks were imminent.

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Do not rely upon God. You are in our hands. CCP authorities to Francis Théry

The CCP billed the Three-Self Movement as a “purely patriotic movement.” Catholics saw the movement as a clever stratagem designed to break their ties with the pope. As Catholics rushed to the defense of the church, the CCP, for its part, pressed its advantage. The lines had been drawn and the enemies targeted. The battle was about to begin. The fi rst salvo was fi red by the CCP. The CCP chose its targets wisely: those who had most frustrated the Three-Self Movement. The fi rst target was Riberi, who represented the pope in his person. The second target was the Catholic Central Bureau, the central coordinating center for the bishops and a major publishing arm of the church. The third target was the Legion of Mary, the Catholic lay movement that had disseminated CCB literature and encouraged Catholics to be faithful to the pope. All three had undermined the Three-Self Movement. The CCP would now target all three: the head, the central nervous system, and the arms and legs of the resistance movement, the church militant. Yet the CCP found itself in a predicament. It wanted to break the power of the Catholic Church, and neutralizing these three targets would go a long way in achieving its ends. Yet the Common Program permitted freedom of religion. How could the CCP expel the Vatican ambassador, shut down the bishop’s central office, and disband a voluntary Catholic lay association without contradicting its own law? The cadres struck upon a plan. They would no longer directly attack the church. Rather, they would attack the “imperialists and their running dogs” who were “hiding under the cloak of religion” and “opposing the Chinese people.” These were the watchwords endlessly repeated in 68

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the press offensive. Once the “masses” were “awakened” to the crimes of the church, they would demand action. The party would then simply respond to the “will of the people.” It was a classic campaign of agitation propaganda: stir up the “masses,” and then implement the predetermined strategy.1

Target: Riberi Archbishop Anthony Riberi, the papal internuncio, was still in China. He found himself in a bind. As a Vatican diplomat, Riberi was only accredited to the Nationalist regime, a regime that had fled to Taiwan. Further, the Vatican and the People’s Republic of China did not recognize each other. Riberi decided to set the example for his fellow missionaries and remain at his post. He waited to present his diplomatic credentials to the new government. 2 It was a bold move, for Riberi must have known how much he had antagonized the CCP. In the eyes of the CCP, Riberi had committed unpardonable sins: he was staunchly antiCommunist, he had encouraged the growth of the Legion of Mary, and he had frustrated the implementation of the regime’s religious policy. 3 From the beginning, tensions had mounted between Riberi and the CCP. Yet the proximate cause for the rift was his letters. In his letter of March 31 and in subsequent letters, Riberi had denounced the Nanjing Manifesto. The document had been written in his own city, without his knowledge, and more damaging still, it had been signed by the vicar general. By responding so forcefully to the Nanjing Manifesto and urging the bishops to remain united with Rome, Riberi had touched a raw nerve. He was accused of trying to sabotage a government-sponsored movement and interfering with internal government affairs. Riberi had to go. Yet because Riberi was an international figure, the CCP had to move carefully. In order not to appear arbitrary or insensitive, the CCP fi rst mobilized public opinion against Riberi. The “will of the people” would be aroused, and then Riberi would be expelled. The campaign against Riberi began in April with a steady stream of articles in the newspapers. By June, especially from the eighth to the tenth, the stream became a torrent in the Shanghai Liberation Daily.4 A few of these articles were more sophisticated and convincing than the rest. They avoided the tired slogans. At least one was written by an insider with a good knowledge of Catholicism. For example, a June 8 article was purportedly written by Yang Shida, the 69

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government-installed dean of Aurora University and a self-proclaimed “patriotic” Catholic. “The Way in which Imperialist Riberi Opposes China’s People,” provides a “patriotic” Catholic account of Riberi’s work in China. Mixing historical fact with personal fancy, the author made much of the fact that Riberi arrived in China just after the Japanese defeat. He interpreted Riberi’s every step as strengthening imperialism and not the church. He accused Riberi of establishing the Catholic Central Bureau in 1947 to serve, not the bishops, but imperialism, and he also claimed that Riberi used the CCB to strengthen opposition to the Chinese people. The CCB was, in fact, “his iniquitous tool and center of plotting.” The author also accused both Riberi and his Chinese language secretary, Matthew Chen Zhemin, of assisting the “puppet” KMT government.5 But Riberi’s most egregious offense was that, after “patriotic” Catholics had begun the Three-Self Movement, he had sent out “circular letters” to the dioceses to “destroy” the movement. In addition, he was responsible for Xuexi cankao [Study reference], which included Matthew Chen Zhemin’s article attacking the Three-Self Movement. All of the above proved Riberi’s “inimical attitude” to the “patriotic movement.” Given these “facts,” Yang Shida concluded that Riberi was “the running dog of America, a member of bandit Chiang’s pack of rogues, and the mortal enemy of the Chinese People.” Decisive action was needed. “Let us, patriotic Chinese Catholics stand together with the entire nation; let us petition the Government to expel immediately from our country the imperialist Riberi.”6 The stage was set. On June 26, Archbishop Riberi and his staff were placed under house arrest. For the next seventy days, Riberi was interrogated—often sitting upright on a backless stool—during sessions that lasted fourteen hours or more. The press accused him of three major crimes: “carrying out espionage activities,” backing the “counterrevolutionary” and “clandestine” Legion of Mary, and “instigating Catholics to oppose the People’s Government.”7 “Patriotic” Christians were then called into action. On September 4, Riberi was expelled by the Nanjing MCC. “Brought before a battery of cameras, microphones and wire recorders, the ‘banishment’ order was read to the internuncio. He was handed a list of accusations and told to sign it. The prelate read the charges against him and replied, ‘I will never sign such a list of falsehoods.’”8 Four days later, Riberi was denounced in the Shanghai News Daily by Li Weiguang, Nanjing’s vicar general and animator of the Nanjing 70

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Manifesto, now listed as the “acting” bishop of Nanjing. Riberi was also denounced by Wu Yaozong, Yang Shida, and Hu Wenyao.9 After he was expelled from Nanjing, he was sent to Shanghai. From there he was put on a train for the fi fty-hour ride to the Hong Kong border. The Vatican internuncio would never return to China.

Target: The Catholic Central Bureau The Catholic Central Bureau—as we have seen—was the central coordinating body for the bishops in China. It had an interesting genesis. Because China was one of the most diverse and populous nations on earth, reliable travel and communication were real difficulties. In this context, the different Catholic dioceses and missions operated quite independently of each other. A central organization for the bishops was badly needed. During the bishops’ first meeting in 1924, they had organized three separate bishops’ commissions. It was a step in the right direction. But since the Chinese church was divided into 144 ecclesiastical divisions, it was all the more necessary for the bishops to centralize their work. The answer was the Catholic Central Bureau, which would be strictly at the service of China’s Catholic bishops. In a letter of December 1947, Riberi reorganized the three commissions and started the CCB with the “unanimous” consent of the bishops.10 The majority of its ten departments would be located in the middle of Shanghai’s French concession. Letters of the time describe Riberi as a man of great zeal and vision. He also had a knack for fi nding “able” priests to head the various departments. They included some of the most gifted churchmen in China. For example, there was John Tung (Dong) Shizhi, the one who would later offend the regime with his “To Satisfy Both Sides” speech in Chongqing. There was also Francis X. Legrand, a Belgian priest and publisher, who had started the China Missionary in March of 1948. The fi rst issue had an introductory letter from Riberi himself, which stated that the magazine was “needed as a link uniting our embattled priestly forces.”11 Legrand also published other books and pamphlets as well, some of which had a circulation of one hundred thousand. Riberi also recruited “refugee” bishops who could not return to their “liberated” dioceses. One such “refugee” bishop was James E. Walsh, a Maryknoll missionary and the fi rst American Catholic bishop in China. At Riberi’s invitation, Walsh was invited to Shanghai in June of 1948. Walsh found a lot to recommend the CCB: “wonderfully good priests, 71

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both foreign and Chinese” doing “well performed” work “vital for the whole of China.”12 Even so, Walsh felt that while Shanghai was “a dizzy place,” the Catholic Central Bureau was “the dizziest place in it.” One known to always speak his mind, Walsh faulted Riberi, “a very nice fellow, but a typical European. Leave everything up in the air and everybody in confusion: such is his motto.”13 In fact, Riberi was not “a man of detail himself, nor in any sense an organizer.”14 Moreover, the CCB had no “central organization” and was “without any superior, without any rule.” Finally, after getting the brush-off, Walsh “cornered” Riberi and “made a plan.” The more practical-minded American drew up a “scheme of organization” and “some order was put in the place.”15 On 20 August, Walsh was made the CCB’s general secretary. It seems to have been Riberi’s plan all along. The CCB had a staff of about sixteen priests and twice as many lay clerks. It was a national work with a national culture. This was attested to by language. Walsh reports that everybody in the bureau spoke English except for one Chinese priest. Only one priest spoke the Shanghai dialect. The remaining sixteen priests all spoke Mandarin, except for Walsh, who—originally schooled in Cantonese—was making valiant efforts to learn the national language. Still, Walsh commented, “we all get along somehow.”16 The CCB was able to function quite smoothly for several years. It was not to last. The new regime had already begun to target it in April 1951 when it arrested Francis Théry on charges of “espionage.” In prison, he had refused to become its spy. Yet the CCP was nothing if not patient. Experts in cracking organizations, the CCP had already managed to get a mole inside the Catholic Central Bureau. According to Aedan McGrath—who in his capacity as national director of the Legion of Mary had an office at the CCB—someone there “was giving out information.”17 To back up his claim, McGrath notes that a SinoSoviet Friendship Club ticket was found in the desk of one of the staff. McGrath never mentions the person’s name, but it was sufficient proof for McGrath. There was a mole in their midst. This man had not only attended Communist functions, something forbidden by the church, but he had probably passed along intelligence at the club. This presented CCB officials with a quandary. If they dismissed the man suspected of being a mole, then the CCP would know that their agent had been compromised. The party might even suspect that the bureau really did have something to hide. Yet if the man remained, 72

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then the CCB itself was compromised. The problem was soon resolved. Joseph Shen Shixian had already prudently replaced Bishop Walsh as the director of the CCB in order to blunt charges that it was an imperialist headquarters. Shen now invited this man to work in his own office. “[I]t was like taking the lion into you own den,” McGrath would later state.18 But Shen wanted to show the CCP that the CCB had nothing to hide. But there were others spying on the CCB as well. One young woman, a recent convert, went around the CCB offices asking for the autographs of the various priests. She would also write down everything that Chen Zhemin said in his rather strong sermons. At one point, she was even caught recording the bicycle license numbers of some priests.19 These actions only further increased suspicion. It seemed that the CCB was now being targeted in a multifaceted campaign of pressure and surveillance. Month after month, the pressure continued to build. By June 8, an editorial in the Liberation Daily explained that the CCB was “under the leadership and command of Monaco-born imperialist Riberi.” The CCP had a dark view of the CCB. They did not see it as a religious organization charged with coordinating the missionary, cultural, welfare, and educational activities of the Catholic Church in China. Rather, they said it was “not only the ‘brain trust’ agency which uses religion to camouflage its reactionary propaganda books and periodicals but moreover, it is the command post of the Catholic organized mobile brigade and the Legion of Mary.” Its aim “is to lead the imperialists inside the Church in carrying out their secret sabotaging operations.”20 The party gave its own view of the CCB’s history. Established in December 1947 by Riberi, its general secretary, Bishop Walsh, was a “trusty” of “America’s protector of the interests of Wall Street,” New York’s Archbishop Spellman. This accusation—most likely—grew out of Spellman’s 1948 trip through Asia, in which he was accompanied by Walsh. According to the article, under Riberi’s direction, “Walsh turned the Catholic Central Bureau into a more open anti-communist and antipeople stronghold.”21 One of the CCB’s major crimes was producing and publishing such “ill-famed” Catholic literature as the China Missionary Bulletin and the study reference. Both had done much to undermine the Three-Self Movement among Catholics. This literature distorted “the laws of the People’s Government,” and was anti-Communist and anti-Russian.22 The editorial did not hesitate to name names. The CCB officers were the “imperialists” Gustave Prévost, Francis Théry, Francis Legrand, 73

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James Motte, and Joseph Vos. It was they who controlled the Chinese priest Joseph Shen Shixian. Further, from the CCB, leader of the Legion of Mary Aedan McGrath and Matthew Chen Zhemin, “continued their widespread inimical activity of sabotaging the Chinese People’s Movement.”23 The CCP certainly had these facts right. They knew—with great accuracy—the major officers of the CCB. The constant surveillance had paid off. Therefore, the CCB was clearly “the headquarters for sabotaging the patriotic movement and for intervening in Chinese internal affairs.” Having given its evidence, the editorial then, speaking on behalf of the nation, issued its command. “We, the Chinese People and all patriotic Chinese Catholics must arise to disclose and break up this center of hidden plots. We petition the Government to strip the religious cloak off of these imperialists and their ‘running dogs’ and to deal with them severely.”24 And the CCB was dealt with severely. In fact, by the time these articles announcing the June 8 shutdown went to press, the CCB had already been closed for two days. McGrath gives a fi rsthand account of what transpired on the morning of June 6.25 For months, the atmosphere at the CCB had been tense. It was making some of the staff a little neurotic, especially Joseph Shen Shixian. Shen had a long association with McGrath and other Irish Columbans both in China and in Ireland where he had spent two summers. In happier days, the “Chinese Irishman” was known for his good cheer, his pipe-smoking, and his love of all things Irish. But now Shen’s increasingly dark sense of humor was worrying McGrath. McGrath relates the ironic role Shen actually played in the police action. He [Joseph Shen Shixian] was, I think, most people would say a little nervous about things and he was highly strung and of course not well, but he often used to play practical jokes. He would come to our door and knock at it and say: ‘Open up quick. You are going to be arrested. The police are here,’ and things like that. He often said it and indeed it upset me quite a bit a couple of times. But it was strange that eventually he should be the one to say it in the Catholic Central Bureau. He did actually open the door and say: ‘The police are here.’26 The police were there. They had arrived by car and parked in the empty lot. The CCB priests then went to the chapel to pray the rosary. Meanwhile, for two hours, the police searched the building. The CCB 74

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was then ordered to suspend its activities. Its offices were sealed. All CCB publications were now to be submitted for an official investigation. The directors were interrogated on the spot. Curiously, they were allowed to return home. This uneasy period continued for three months. Then, at 2:30 a.m. on September 7, just two days after Riberi passed through Shanghai on his way out of China, the police arrested four CCB directors at their homes.27 They were Francis X. Legrand, director of the cultural department; Aedan McGrath, national director of the Legion of Mary; Matthew Chen Zhemin, Riberi’s Chinese language secretary; and Joseph Shen Shixian, director of Catholic Lay Action. A month later, on October 4, Gustave Prévost was arrested, and the following day Gabriel Quint was arrested as well. Oddly enough, Bishop Walsh was left alone. He continued to live a somewhat surreal existence at the CCB. His bedroom and office were surrounded by rooms sealed off by the police. As far as institutions went, the CCB had been quite impressive. However, the survival of Catholic institutions, and even Catholic clergy, was now precarious at best. This was proven by the attack on the CCB and its officers. Could anything weather the current campaigns? Perhaps a tightly knit, cellular lay organization could ensure Catholic survival. Catholic leaders set their sights on the Legion. So did the CCP.

Target: The Legion of Mary Riberi and the CCB had proven easy enough targets. Riberi was just one man and the CCB just one office. A handful of arrests, mainly of foreigners, neutralized the problem. Yet the Legion of Mary would prove more tenacious, for it was precisely that, a legion, and Shanghai alone already numbered hundreds if not a thousand or more Legionaries. The Legion not only relied on quantity but quality. They were well trained and “the hardest to deceive because of their thorough instruction in Catholic doctrine.”28 Yet the Legion was still a small minority even within the Catholic Church, let alone China as a whole. CCP actions certainly surprised some Legionaries: “We expected that they would fi rst strike at our bishop, priests and Sisters but unexpectedly, we Legionaries found ourselves as the fi rst target.”29 The fact is that the Legion had already become a thorn in the regime’s side. It had protested Riberi’s expulsion, frustrated the TSPM, 75

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and dissuaded Catholics from joining the Communist Youth League. Its crimes were clear, and there was a compelling logic in targeting the Legion. Again, a direct attack on the Catholic Church would be counterproductive. It would violate Chinese law. Better for the CCP to make an indirect attack on the Legion. It would allow the regime the plausible deniability it needed. After all, it was not attacking the worldwide Catholic Church, it was simply attacking the “reactionary” Legion of Mary that was “hiding under the cloak of religion.” There were other reasons as well. Philomena Hsieh, an active Legionary of the time, speculates thus: “Perhaps the new government did not think a new organization would have solid foundations. Perhaps they expected teenagers to succumb easily under pressure and assault.”30 In fact, the Legion was made up of pious and innocent and, perhaps, impressionable and naïve youngsters. By their own admission, some were even from “comfortable” families, which even employed servants and cooks. Some had attended elite and expensive missionary schools like Aurora Women’s College. Surely—the regime must have thought—these youth would be no match for hardened CCP cadres, and the combined forces of the Public Security Bureau. Hsieh gives yet another possible reason for the CCP’s campaign against the Legion: “The government hoped that if the Legion of Mary fell, it would have a ‘domino effect’ and cause the collapse of other Catholic organizations. Then the whole Roman Catholic Church in China would fall also.”31 Another possibility was that the CCP misunderstood the spirit of the Legion, thinking that it was a real military organization. In this sense, the Legion—in many ways—was a mirror image of the CCP. Were not the members pledged to secrecy? Did they not make up a hierarchically organized cellular structure? Further, did not the Legion use military language that—despite the protestations of Legionaries—could easily be misconstrued? In many ways the Legion had the same clandestine makeup as the CCP itself. This made the CCP feel all the more threatened. Or perhaps the CCP deliberately “misread” the Legion. The “unfortunate” name and nomenclature made the Legion an easy target. Years later, reflecting back on his experience, McGrath thinks the name “gave them the excuse for which they had been looking. If the Communists could expose the Legion as a secret underground movement of the Church, then all their accusations against the latter—espionage, treason, reaction—would be justified.”32 If Chinese citizens became convinced that the Legion really was an army with weapons poised against the 76

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state, they would be all the more susceptible to a propaganda campaign that accused the Legion of the most heinous crimes. It is telling that— in Chinese—the names of the Marian Sodalities (Shengmuhui) and the Legion of Mary (Shengmujun) differed by only one character. But the difference between an “association” and a “legion” was enough—for the time being—to leave the Sodalities in peace and the Legion to warrant national attention. Some Legionaries—for their part—felt the reason for the attack was really quite simple. First and foremost, one longtime Legionary said, the CCP was against “our Blessed Mother.”33 Her sentiments were echoed by her friend and fellow Legionary: “All those who oppose and hate the Catholic Church, fi rst attack the Blessed Virgin.”34 This fight was personal. It was—as their own handbook had warned them—Mary against the serpent. Did not the very Legion standard show Mary crushing the head of the reviled serpent? The June propaganda blitz in the Liberation Daily had launched a significant attack on the Legion.35 The Legion became “an organization . . . to promote reactionary activities.” Frank Duff, its founder, became “a reactionary guardian of the interests of the ruling class.” Its aim became to “oppose the affairs of the Chinese people.” Anything done for Mary was reread as done “for the imperialists.” The Legion’s handbook was quoted as saying that the present age was “evil, malodorous and thorny” and full of “godlessness.” This was the same age—the editorial noted— when “the revolution of the peoples of the world suddenly became widespread.”36 The article then issued a broadside against Legion spirituality, confusing metaphor for reality: “this handbook repeatedly likens the Legion of Mary to the dedication of one’s life to despotism and cruelty of the time of ancient imperial Rome, to an army that mowed down people like hay. Moreover in this mowing down people like hay, the cruel character of the ancient Roman legion is held up as the military model for the Legion of Mary. In a word, the Legion of Mary is truly an earthly army, hiding under the cloak of religion, which swears loyalty to serve the reactionary cause of the imperialists.”37 The article also linked Riberi and McGrath to Chiang Kai-shek, for Riberi, “in order to direct and collaborate with Chiang Kai-shek’s reactionary administration and to continue the slaughter of the Chinese People, sent in August 1948 his agent McGrath to visit Peking [Beijing] and Tientsin [Tianjin] stealthily and to organize secretly the Legion of Mary.” Legionaries committed numerous crimes by sending “reactionaries into 77

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schools to disseminate reactionary propaganda,” where they went about “sabotaging the People’s patriotic movement.” They also circulated Legion handbooks and other “poisonous reactionary publications.” But they “reached the most violent degree” when they opposed the TSPM.38 The Legion’s crimes had been revealed, and justice was now demanded. “In order to protect the fruits of victory of the people of our country, to guard the interests of the people, not to permit the slightest imperialist aggression, and to clear the path for the Catholics’ patriotic three autonomies reform movement [TSPM], we must . . . petition the government . . . to suppress forthwith all activities of the Legion of Mary and other such unlawful organizations.”39 There was at least a kernel of truth to some of these charges. McGrath himself would later praise the actions of a twenty-four-year-old Legionary from an old northern Chinese Catholic family. She dressed like a Communist Youth League member and traveled widely through the country. She was able to escape detection for some time before her eventual arrest, just four days before McGrath himself was arrested. In this way, McGrath states—perhaps overenthusiastically—she alone was responsible for starting 350 Legion groups.40 Yet for McGrath and the Shanghai Legionaries, not all the news from the north was positive. On May 13, the foreign bishop of Tianjin was expelled for supporting the Legion, and exactly a month later, the Legion itself was banned from the city. The following day a news report claimed that more than one thousand Legionaries had registered in the north. It also gave figures on the number of handbooks and Legion standards that had been turned in. CCP cadres had been invited to Legion meetings, but apparently this was only a way for them to get the names and phone numbers of the Legionaries.41 McGrath noted that Legionaries had “simply given up their minutes and their books” in Tianjin.42 The Legion suffered a similar plight in Beijing. On July 5, the People’s Daily blasted the “reactionary” Legion, and on the night of July 25, the Beijing PSB sealed two-thirds of the city’s Catholic churches and imprisoned Chinese and foreign priests. In both cities, Legionaries offered little resistance. The Legion was beginning to crack under the incessant pressure. In Shanghai, the Legionaries argued, it would be different. They had learned a valuable lesson from the anti-Legion campaign in the north: do not be naïve with the CCP. The Shanghai Legionaries were determined to fight. Preparation was crucial, for by mid-July the campaign against the Legion had already moved to Shanghai. Legionaries were told to 78

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register with the local Public Security Bureau. In response, the key spiritual directors and officers of the Shanghai Legion gathered at Aurora Women’s College.43 They tried to figure out a plan of action. Should they suspend Legion activities? Should they prove to the CCP that the Legion was not secret? In fact, they actually drafted a letter to the party. Finally, they decided not to send it. They stayed clear of the authorities: “just let them make the fi rst step.”44 McGrath and the other leaders ultimately decided to “close down the Legion and burn every trace of anything that might help the Communists.”45 In fact, McGrath himself burned material evidence relating to the Legion: photographs, letters, minutes of meetings, and lists of names.46 He did a thorough job, but as we will see, the security apparatus was always a step ahead of him. Even though the Shanghai Legionaries suspended their activities, they decided they would never register. The reasons were largely two-fold.47 They could not admit to the lie that they were a reactionary organization. They were, rather, a devotional group. Second, if they compromised with the regime now, it would simply embolden the regime to demand more in the future. The Legionaries decided to draw a line in the sand. For his part, McGrath was “terrified” about the coming confrontation with the government. Yet he watched his Legionaries “cutting their hair, preparing for prison, making cotton clothes, sleeping on the floor,” and this helped him overcome his own fear of imprisonment.48 The youth were even inspiring their own leaders. McGrath’s preparation was not in vain. Because he was the national director of the Legion of Mary, he was labeled a key counterrevolutionary. At 11:30 p.m. on September 6, several hundred policemen blocked the streets outside his residence and searched the premises. They discovered a few letters he had forgotten, and they took his personal photographs. Luckily, there were no lists or photos of the Legionaries; McGrath “had destroyed these things, lest Legionaries might be inconvenienced by their investigations.”49 The police kept his radio in place, and then they put obscene literature and weapons on the table. A young girl with a Leica camera took photos of the doctored scene, which appeared in the newspapers. Several hours later, he was taken to the police station. Shortly thereafter, McGrath says he was taken “by two armed soldiers” to a “brilliantly lit room and around the table there were about ten judges” sitting below a picture of Mao Zedong. 50 The case was now opened. McGrath had already come up with his own strategy. He knew the judges had in front of them a list of the Legionaries. (Weeks before 79

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his arrest, hundreds of students had scoured the residential areas of Shanghai and collected the names of the Legionaries.) McGrath would only give the names of the Legion’s key officers. There was little harm in doing so, for their names had long been public information. Beyond that, he decided to “stand on absolute truth.”51 “The Legion is not reactionary and is not secret, therefore, tell everything about it, at least anything that they wanted to know. And when it came to the question of names, try and avoid everything possible.”52 Yet his inquisitors kept demanding that he name the Shanghai Legionaries. McGrath soon recognized that the Public Security Bureau was a formidable adversary. Speaking of his experience, McGrath states, “After a few nights of these interrogations, I realized that their methods were far more thorough than I had ever imagined.” For example, even though he had previously destroyed his correspondence with the Legionaries, he says, “I very soon discovered that they knew all about my letters anyway, and the only way they could have done it was by reading the carbon blue papers, which I had never thought of destroying.”53 The police had done their homework. In fact, even before McGrath was arrested, a fellow priest used to naïvely joke with him, saying, “Well, we just won’t tell them anything because they certainly don’t know more than we know.” What he meant was that the police could hardly know more about his own personal life than he himself did. Years later, upon release from prison, McGrath met up with this priest again and his confrere laughed and said, “You know I realize now that they actually did know more than I knew.”54 Still, McGrath had his own weapon. Through the whole ordeal he prayed to Mary: “I knew that the eyes of that Mother were never off me, and that Her mantle was ever closely bound around me, and that no harm could come to me, even though these people were obviously the tools of the devil.” In fact, McGrath even felt that his oft-recited Legion prayers had prepared him for this trial, “No wonder they [the police] echoed the Antiphon in the prayers of the Legion: ‘Who is this Woman? Who is this Woman that is so hard to hide, so hard to catch?’ Being the envoys of Satan they surely hated Her.”55 McGrath, ever the Legionary, was now engaging in the spiritual combat demanded of him as a son of Mary. While McGrath was being interrogated in prison, similar interrogations were taking place with the other priests who had been arrested in early September. Then, on September 22, two Italian Salesian priests, 80

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Michael Suppo and Mario Cuomo, were arrested. The reason: they had served as spiritual directors for the Legion. Yet so far, very few Chinese Catholic leaders had been apprehended in the fall campaign. (A notable exception was Beda Chang, who was arrested on August 9, in the midst of the campaigns against Riberi, the CCB, and the Legion of Mary. We will return to his story later.) With the midsummer registrations and arrests, the campaign in the north—against the Legion in particular and the church in general—had been brutally effective. Yet in Shanghai, only a few key leaders, for the most part foreigners, had been arrested. This would all soon change. Now ordinary members of the Legion in Shanghai were targeted. By mid-September, Hu Wenyao, leader of the Shanghai Catholic branch of the RA-AK Movement, and other “progressive” Catholics published accounts denouncing the Legion, organized study sessions, and encouraged anti-Legion propaganda.

Registration of Legionaries The opening salvo against rank-and-file Shanghai Legionaries was fi red on September 29 with the Liberation Daily article titled “National Day—Study Topics on the Reactionary Legion of Mary.”56 The content of the article was similar to the July 5 article in the People’s Daily. It was also similar to the material just then being disseminated by Hu Wenyao. The article claimed that the true aim of the Legion “was to organize a world-wide international fascist reaction to the true and legitimate aspirations of the people.” It was “an imperialist tool for aggression,” and so was the “mortal enemy of China.”57 Thus, in order to adequately prepare for the upcoming National Day on October 1, the whole city had to be alerted to the dangers posed by the Legion. The campaign against the Legion continued to poison the atmosphere between the Shanghai Catholic community and the CCP. According to a fi rsthand account, the CCP invited Bishop Kung to attend National Day celebrations on October 1. Kung refused, and some would criticize him years later for his fi rm stance.58 On October 4, the Liberation Daily launched a propaganda barrage against the Legion. It lasted in earnest until October 10, although articles continued to appear after that date. Once again, it was classic agitation propaganda in action. On some days, up to half the articles in the paper dealt with the Legion. For the whole month of October, the 81

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campaign took up about 645 inches of newspaper space.59 Indeed, there was a great deal of repetition in the articles, but for the CCP, the evil nature of the Legion needed to be emphasized. On October 7—in the midst of the campaign—president of the Shanghai Legion Shen Duocai and his vice president were arrested. The most important goal of the campaign was to get Legionaries to register with the government. The Legionaries—for their part—felt that compliance would be suicide. Yet even despite Legion resistance, the CCP pressed its advantage, for the indignation of the masses had been raised through the propaganda campaign. Now—responding to the masses—on October 8, 1951, the Shanghai MCC outlawed the “counterrevolutionary” Legion of Mary. “All who belong to this reactionary group must go to their residential area office to register their resignation from the Legion of Mary.”60 Those who registered would be treated leniently; those who refused would be punished severely. Special registration centers were set up at each of the local police stations. The signs outside of these offices read “Registry Office for Members of the Reactionary Legion of Mary.” Soldiers were posted at the entrances.61 Legion officers were further ordered to “confess frankly” and to produce documents and evidence concerning the “reactionary organization.” The registration document read: I the undersigned joined the reactionary Legion of Mary on (date) and conducted secret counter-revolutionary and evil activities against the Government, the people and Soviet Russia. I hereby resign from the Legion of Mary and promise never to participate in such activities in the future.62 The propaganda blitz continued. A photo spread in the October 10 Liberation Daily showed alleged Legionaries registering with the police, ex-Legionaries cheering the government’s decision to “outlaw” the group, “reactionary” literature used to “deceive” the Catholic students, and equipment purportedly given to the Legion by the United States Army. A careful investigation of these photos reveals the same “Legionaries” making multiple appearances. Some Legionaries were completely surprised by the attack. Catherine Ho says the “announcement came as a shock, and immediately the atmosphere became extremely tense.” “At that time,” she continues, “all we had was a strong enthusiasm. So, in the face of this fi rst unexpected 82

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frontal attack, we were at a loss to know what to do.”63 Her confrere, Philomena Hsieh, had a similar reaction: “Instantly, the Legion became China’s ‘Public Enemy Number One.’ We were under pressure from all sides and we felt like mice crossing the street, open to the abuse of everyone.”64 For those who felt like “mice crossing the street,” the choice was excruciating. “Registration would acknowledge that the Legion of Mary was a political, subversive organization and it also required handing in a list of members. Refusing to register would mean losing one’s job or being expelled from school.”65 Even if the young Legionaries wanted to keep their job or remain at school, how could they possibly consent to the lie that the Legion was counterrevolutionary? How could they possibly betray their friends? Yet they were asked to “acknowledge a false accusation of the Communists, against our conscience and our Faith.”66 What made matters worse for the young Legionaries was that the CCP was “continually tricking us by changing its policies.”67 In the face of these changing policies, the Legionaries turned to their religious leaders for guidance. Their priests, the “representatives of Christ,” would make sure they “would not go astray and lose sight of the principles and standpoint of a Catholic.”68 The priests told them that truth was on their side. In fact, “Bishop Kung of Shanghai,” Hsieh would later relate, “told us not to comply and exhorted us to be true to our Faith in all circumstances.”69 “We totally trusted Bishop Kung as our good shepherd.”70 In fact, according to the “Notations,” the reality was a bit more complex.71 It appears that once the anti-Legion decree was promulgated, Bishop Kung allowed the Legion leadership to decide for themselves the proper course of action. The fact was that the highest-ranking Legion officials had already been arrested, some hesitated, and others became paralyzed by fear. The whole Catholic Youth movement was now vulnerable. It risked being divided against itself. Now was the perfect time for the regime to exploit weaknesses and throw the whole movement off balance. Immediately, the Chinese Jesuits—who at this point had more than a year’s experience directing the youth—“grasped the gravity of the situation.” They realized that the Catholic Youth needed to maintain unity against a much more powerful enemy. Therefore, they sent two of their number to meet with Bishop Kung. They wanted clear directives. Rather than let the Legion heads decide in isolation the proper course of action, the whole youth movement should be mobilized in defense of the Legion. 83

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The battle was now fought on the grassroots level. If some Legionaries were under pressure, the youth of the catechism groups would encourage them. They would pray, fast, and sacrifice. Further, if a particular Legionary was threatened with arrest, “the other students immediately offered him all the marks of respect possible that go with being a future confessor of the faith.”72 The mobilization was working. In fact, even the special militants were inserting themselves into the conflict—often in hidden ways—to assist the beleaguered Legionaries. And they were beleaguered. The pressure was relentless as the government used flyers, exhibitions, newspapers, radio, and rallies. “The unions, merchant associations, professional and cultural organizations, representatives of diverse religious confessions, etc., voted unanimously on motions calling for the police to crack down.”73 These campaigns were exacting a personal price. The Legionaries could be arrested at any time. In response, they prepared for arrest. They knew that certain items were prohibited in jail to prevent suicide. Philomena Hsieh recounts her experience thus: “[W]e all prepared a small bundle of special clothes (without buttons or long strings) in case of need. I kept mine hidden from my parents as I did not want them to be frightened and so disturb my decision.”74 Given such resolve, it is no surprise that in the initial weeks of the campaign against the Legion, very few Legionaries registered—by some accounts perhaps just six out of one thousand. One who apparently did register was Gu Mingyu, a second-year high-school student at Aurora. She was immediately exploited for propaganda value. The Liberation Daily ran an article on how she left the Legion of Mary.75 Mingyu’s classmate, a member of the Communist Youth League, accompanied her to the registration office, for she “had helped her to see her errors, encouraged her to resign from the Legion and come back into the people’s fold.”76 At fi rst, her friend showed her that the Legion was banned in Tianjin. She also brought Mingyu to a Resist America, Aid Korea rally attended by “progressive” Catholics. At this meeting, Chen Jiali, a former Legionary, spoke about being obliged to give out reactionary propaganda. After a litany of such examples, Mingyu reflected on her dilemma and realized that she had also “been used by the Imperialists to distribute books and reactionary magazines” to other Chinese.77 Thanks to her friends, Mingyu realized her transgressions and decided to help “others of the Legion of Mary who have been misled to awaken quickly from their error and come back to the people’s fold again, to be the good students 84

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of President Mao.”78 It seemed that not only Catholics but the CCP itself had its own converts. Foreign Legionaries—numbering about six hundred—were also troubled by the registration movement. McCarthy wrote on November 24, 1951, that a number of them had their exit visas delayed for months because they “refuse[d] to sign that it [the Legion] was an antigovernment imperialist organization.”79 But the young Chinese Legionaries suffered the most. For the vast majority, the pressure became unbearable. They were attacked on all sides. The police would visit them at their homes or bring them to indoctrination meetings. Philomena Hsieh recalls: “Communist officials and policemen from my neighborhood did come to see me one after another, to question my thinking about all these political movements, trying to instruct me in Communist ideology and to persuade me to register. I did my best to be patient and show respect for them.”80 Another time, the “police came, armed with revolvers, and looked very threatening.”81 Hsieh and her sister grabbed their bundles and said, “We won’t sign anything, but we will go along with you if you like.”82 Other times the situation became more violent. PSB agents, “banging their fists on the table and stamping their feet violently on the ground,” would say, “The People’s Liberation Army was able to destroy even the eight million strong Nationalist Reactionary Army. Will it be afraid of this tiny group of young Legionaries—with the down still on their faces?”83 Then they would entice the Legionaries: “Just think—you are so young. Why do you have to bring suffering on yourselves? As a result, you will not be able to study or to find a job, and you will have to face the pain and sorrow of a life with no future.”84 Legionaries also were told that priests like Prévost and McGrath had already confessed. Therefore, they should confess as well. Legionaries were left wondering what was true and what was a lie. Parents also pleaded with their children to register, “We have given you a good education, we have let you do everything you wanted, let you go to a Catholic school, and now you get us all into trouble by refusing to sign a document of little consequence.”85 The pressure was clearly taking its toll on these parents. Catherine Ho’s mother spent many nights “crying all the time.”86 Her father was “nearly frantic with worry and anxiety,” and told her, “If you cannot understand, I can only die in front of you.”87 Then, some parents—in a shocking reversal of traditional Chinese roles—would actually perform the kowtow (deep reverential bow) in front of their children, imploring them to register.88 85

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Then, after the officers of the Legion’s Shanghai governing body had been arrested, some parents actually dragged their children to the registration center. They thought this would end the investigation. They did not want the whole family to be penalized if their children did not register. Yet even this was not effective, as some Legionaries returned the next day to invalidate their registration. Even so, the pressure to register took its toll. According to Catherine Ho, the fi fteen-year-old Legionary, the campaign was bringing her to the “breaking point.”89 Legionaries were “despised and harassed at school” and “perturbed by the explanations of the public.”90 In fact, not only Legionaries were at the breaking point, but some of the priest-directors as well. Joseph Vos, a Scheut priest, had already seen three of his Legionary group arrested. As a result, he could not sleep well for three months. He got whiter and thinner. Finally, it was all too much for him. In a moment of insanity, he actually cut his veins. He was rushed to the hospital, and upon being brought back to consciousness, he said, “My God. Did I do that?” He had confession and last rites with an attending priest before he died. Under his bed was a letter written in Chinese that stated, “I . . . declare that the Legion of Mary is neither reactionary nor secret, and in testimony I give my life.”91 By the end of October, some Legionaries were also reaching the breaking point, including other leaders. More went to register, and even more were planning to register as well. Several priests who directed the Legion began to think it more prudent to submit to the government. Others countered that their thinking countermanded Bishop Kung’s clear directives not to break ranks. The whole movement might now come undone.92 What happened next is one of the most enigmatic episodes in this narrative. A Jesuit director of the special militants called them together for an emergency meeting. Was there an easy way for Bishop Kung to exhort his priests to fidelity and remind them of his directives? Was there a way for the special militants to counter the possible about-face of the Legion priests? Could they show their own willingness to die for the church in a highly symbolic manner? The solution: a “letter in blood.” It was a high-stakes gamble. The inner workings of this well-known event are difficult to reconstruct. Except for what is described in the “Notations,” the only other major source seems to be Mary Qian’s self-published book, The Victimized. Qian says that some names have been changed, and the book 86

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includes a disclaimer that there is no guarantee as to the accuracy of the information. Even so, everything in her book accords with the historical record. Her story follows, the only eyewitness account of these events that I have obtained. About fifty youth gathered near midnight for a secret meeting at St. Peter’s Church.93 Initially they were told that Bishop Kung was predisposed to have them register, but he sought their opinion. After all, the registration did not go against essential Catholic belief. Yet the youth would not back down. They drafted the letter that read in part as follows: “We are proud to live in the age of persecution and there can be no compromise.”94 They now set to writing it out in blood. To this end, a doctor had a flask of blood that had been anonymously donated for the letter, and the signatories all pricked their fi ngers to sign in their own blood. The letter was later presented to Bishop Kung who was impressed with the “letter in blood” and the courage of the Catholic Youth.95 Later, Mary Qian would have doubts over her role in signing the letter and, indeed, over who was guiding the whole process. According to the “Notations,” Bishop Kung, for his part, had no doubts. He acknowledged the effect of the letter, “and he himself called together each of the priests in question to make them read the letter.”96 The letter bore results. By the end of October, McCarthy would note “[a]n intense movement to splinter off Catholic lay leaders and induce them to accuse the Legion of Mary’s director got almost no traction, despite incredible publicity and prodding.”97

Interlude: Shanghai’s First Catholic Martyr The CCP stepped up its pressure. In November, Xu Jianguo became Shanghai’s new director of the Public Security Bureau.98 He was the right man for the job, for he came from Tianjin where he had successfully dismantled the Legion. Now Tianjin would serve as a template for the effective neutralization of the Legion in Shanghai as well. The campaign was thus revivified and some more Legionaries were about to register. Then a remarkable event occurred. The event involved one man: the Jesuit priest Beda Chang, the gifted former principal of St. Ignatius High School and the architect of the catechism group movement. The background to the event was the continuing campaigns against the church. In fact, the destruction of the Legion was only one step in ultimately setting up a puppet church, for at 87

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the same time that the CCP was prosecuting the Legion, it continued to push the Three-Self Movement among Catholics. In order to make this movement a success, the party desperately needed to co-opt a recognized Catholic leader, most preferably a priest, to head the Catholic Three-Self Movement. The CCP already knew that the recent convert Hu Wenyao had little credibility in leading the “reformed” Catholics. It was within this context that some of the Catholic school leaders—who had publicly opposed the Three-Self Movement at the educational meeting back in February—were arrested. The most important of them was Beda Chang. On August 9, 1951, while he was quietly playing mahjong with fellow Jesuits, the police came and took him away in a van. McCarthy wrote tersely: “A fi ne, talented Ch. Father was taken from our faculty rec room after lunch on the 9th; can’t say we’ll see him again.”99 Catholics speculated the reason the government did not announce Chang’s arrest in the newspapers was simple. Perhaps the CCP hoped that, in police custody, he would break and become the cooperative clerical leader the government needed. Little is known of what transpired to Chang during his four months at Ward Road Jail, the vast British-built complex in the north of the city. Jean-Claude Coulet reconstructs the events.100 It seems certain that he was offered the leadership of the Independent Church in Shanghai and that when he refused, every effort was made to break his will and to use him in spite of himself. Nights on nights of interrogation followed his refusal, when lack of sleep and continual tension combined to wear down the last resources of his bodily strength. Fellow prisoners heard him, exhausted and at the end of his strength, repeating simply over and over again “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, help me.” In their efforts to bring about the state of psychological surrender necessary for the success of their plans his captors, in the end, went too far. The constant lack of sleep poisoned his nervous system, and Father Beda fell into a coma. Fearing that he would die before they had had their way with him, the authorities ordered his immediate removal to the prison hospital. But it was already too late . . . the victim had slipped forever from their hands.101 At 8:00 a.m. on November 11, Beda Chang lay dead. The official cause of death was encephalitis. About 5:30 p.m. that same day, a police officer went to the Jesuit residence in Xujiahui to tell them the news. 88

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Francis X. Cai Shifang, pastor of St. Ignatius and a close friend and seminary classmate of Beda Chang, went with Chang’s brother to the prison. There they found Chang’s body stretched out in the prison courtyard. There were no overt signs of torture, but there were unmistakable signs of starvation and exposure. Even Chang’s brother, a medical doctor, did not recognize the blackened and emaciated body. The Catholic community was outraged. By early morning on November 12, numerous locals and young people gathered at St. Ignatius High School chapel. Word of the event spread through the Catholic Youth chain of command. The crowds that gathered at the high school chapel grew larger and larger. “Where is the body,” the students yelled.102 At fi rst, the police had promised to turn over the body, but now they feared a civil disturbance. They sent out plainclothes officers to sense the mood of the crowd. Aware of the volatile situation, the police reneged on their promise to hand over the body. They then dispersed the crowd. The next day, three thousand people thronged St. Ignatius Church. Boys wore black armbands and girls put the “traditional white knot of mourning” in their hair.103 The Jesuit mission superior, Fernand Lacretelle, celebrated the Mass, Francis X. Cai Shifang preached, and Bishop Kung gave the absolution. It was not until late that night, and in great secrecy, that several priests and some immediate family were fi nally allowed to bring Chang’s body to the cemetery. The next day the youth had their own funeral mass at Christ the King. Rather than the customary black, the priests celebrated the Mass of the Holy Cross with red vestments—the liturgical color for martyrs. The following day another mass was held at St. Peter’s Church. Many Aurora University students attended. For their part, the students continued to wear black armbands, to demonstrate both their respect and their defiance. McCarthy writes: We have had much touching evidence of the admiration and affection which the people had for the dear good Chinese Father who died “in vinculis” [in chains] on the 11th. The Masses of requiem were thronged beyond precedent, with crowds devout, earnest,— of men and young people especially. Newspapers carried some articles to smear his name, but they are taken at their worth. The incident will fill a page of exceptional beauty in the history of the Chinese Church and of the Society [the Jesuits]. Probably there will be more like it, before long.104 89

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These requiem masses, “thronged beyond precedent,” took place throughout the city. Finally, the CCP moved to end them. The police called in the pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Hongkou and questioned him about the “criminal” Chang. The pastor of St. Francis Xavier’s Church, who was supposed to say a funeral mass on the upcoming Saturday, was also brought in for questioning. Then the order went out: no more public masses for Beda Chang. Priests who had been responsible for the requiem masses were accused in the Communist newspapers, and the bishop was “questioned” on his attitude toward the whole affair. The CCP published its viewpoint on Beda Chang in the November 17, 1951, issue of the Liberation Daily.105 The article was titled “The Finale of the Imperialists’ Running Dog and Counterrevolutionary, Beda Chang.” It said: “Snugly hidden in Zikawei’s [Xujiahui’s] Middle School [formerly St. Ignatius High School] under the cloak of religion, the imperialist running dog and counter-revolutionary, Beda Chang, carried on anti-Russian, anti-Communist and anti-people’s criminal activities both before and after the liberation.”106 It then listed a litany of his sins. In 1940, he “brazenly entertained” the Japanese. He sent youth “to the States for its slavery education.” He invited bandits “to give reactionary talks” at St. Ignatius High School. He also met with the “American bandit Chiang Kai-shek” and the “criminal Yu Pin.” He distributed anti-Communist propaganda. In a wordplay, he apparently referred to Communism as the “community of production—the community of wives.” He engaged in politics at the school by putting the “the school committee in the hands of reactionary, obscurantist, half-baked students, urging them not to let the progressive elements take control.” He also said that it was wrong to join military training schools because “patriotism and love of religion are contradictory.” Further, the article stated that “[a]fter several interrogations Chang could see the proof of his crimes without any hope of refuting the accusations. But the criminal Chang died of encephalitis before the court could deal out punishment to him.” The article ends on an exasperated note: “They [the Catholics] would have it that this criminal counterrevolutionary is a ‘Saint.’”107 Needless to say, the Catholic perspective, found in a China Missionary Bulletin editorial, was quite different. “What they [the CCP] least want is to elevate anyone to the stature of a martyr for his faith.”108 The editorial ended thus: “His sermon is endless now, written in eternity for the ears of men and angels with the last free gift he had to give to 90

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God—his life.”109 Catholics now believed that Beda Chang would intercede for them from heaven. For their part, the last thing that the cadres wanted was a martyr for the faith. From the beginning, Catholics made pilgrimages to Chang’s unmarked gravesite. In response, the police stationed armed guards there. Was it a reminder of another who had guards placed outside his tomb?

The Registration Movement Continues Up to this point, only a handful of bona fide Legionaries had registered with the police. In fact, Beda Chang’s death only further stiffened Catholic resolve. As many as 2,500 students alone had been mobilized to attend his funeral. The Catholic Youth had shown their burgeoning strength. According to Coulet, the Legionaries’ earlier “letter in blood” was efficacious. “Their gesture was consecrated by the death of Father Chang; the last hesitations disappeared, and the Legionaries declared themselves as a body for a resistance without compromise.”110 For its part, the CCP was surprised by the strength of the Catholic reaction.111 A crisis was brewing, and Pan Hannian, the vice mayor, called Bishop Kung to a meeting. The putative reason for the meeting was how to implement the Common Program. Kung agreed to meet with Pan as long as Hu Wenyao would not be present. Pan agreed and on November 29, the bishop and twenty priests and Catholic laity met with the vice mayor. In his opening talk, Kung gave the following statement: The Government gives the peoples [sic] freedom of faith and grants its citizens who have a religious belief a right to protect their belief and its practice; it permits them to fulfill their duties as patriots in the integrity of the dogma and moral principles. As for me, as regards the Catholic Church, I am the Bishop of the two Dioceses of Shanghai and Suchow [Suzhou]. As to my Country, I am a citizen who professes the Catholic faith. Today, Mr. Mayor, in your presence and in the presence of these gentlemen and these Christians I give you fi rm assurance that I shall not abandon my pure and proper stand with regard to the Church and with regard to my country. As regards the Church, I am a bishop and in conformity with the doctrine and discipline of the Church I am administering the two Diocese[s] . . . I have never spoken, up to now, contrary to 91

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dogma and moral principles and I shall certainly neither say nor do anything contrary to dogma and moral teaching in the future. As regards my country, I am a citizen who is a Catholic. I was born here, I grew up, I became old and I shall be buried here. Under the guarantee of the government’s “Common program” I conform myself, on the one hand, to Catholic doctrine and discipline; on the other, I love my country ardently and I shall fulfill my duties as a Catholic citizen. I have a horror for the imperialism that is invading my country. I have never been used by it and I shall surely not be used by it in the future.112 Kung clearly wanted to be both a Catholic and a patriotic citizen. The regime doubted such an accommodation was possible. The meeting ensued. Some of the Catholic representatives were from the most revered Catholic families, including a relative of Ma Xiangbo. Catholic opinion was divided. One Catholic said the Legion of Mary was recognized by the church, and they could not renounce it. However, if the government dissolved it, they would obey. Some argued that registration did not contradict the essentials of Catholic faith, and because it was a state order, it should be obeyed. Others countered that if they bent on the registration issue, then the regime would next push the Three-Self Movement on the church.113 One proposal was that the Legionaries register with church authorities and not the police. Pan Hannian said he could not accept this without further reflection. As a result of this meeting, Chen Yi, mayor of Shanghai, “admitted that the Legion was not as reactionary as was first portrayed, but the Central Government had made a law requiring the registration of all Legionaries, and a law was a law.”114 The deadline for registration was set for December 13. Compromises were sought. Some Legionaries were tempted to register only if they were allowed to append a note stating that they were registering with the government, but not renouncing the Legion. The police themselves changed their approach. In some cases, the registration forms were altered by removing the word “reactionary” describing the Legion. The result was that some young Legionaries began to give in. Catherine Ho writes that: “In these circumstances, my sister fi nally went to register and one-third of our friends began to waver in their conviction.”115 The CCP’s adroit maneuvers were beginning to bear fruit.116 By rectifying some of the official wording on the registration forms, the government was lowering the bar for more signatures. Yet the hopeless status of the 92

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Legion as a whole was unchanged. Now the party could separate the most committed from those less so: the sheep from the goats. If the party could smash the youth’s morale, the youth might never again regain momentum. Even the priests in the diocese were divided. Bishop Kung wanted to avoid such painful decisions. He began to think that compromise was again more prudent. He called in two of the key Chinese Jesuits. Would they convince the youth to accept the current compromise? The priests spoke frankly. They had supported the Legionaries for three months. Why give in now? Perhaps the youth “were more courageous than their priests.”117 But Bishop Kung decided it was still better to accept the current compromise. Then, on December 17, the government tipped its hand. It arrested Jean de Leffe, a young Jesuit and a moderator in the Legion of Mary.118 He was detained on charges of “refusing to register with the police” and “undermining the registration of other members of the Legion.”119 Names were put out for further arrests. These latest moves only strengthened the Legionaries’ resistance. They were confirmed in their decision: they preferred prison to registration.120 In addition, Bishop Kung changed his mind and returned to his former position of no compromise. For the time being, he held firm and safeguarded group unity. His clergy followed suit. Further, the Catholic community later learned that de Leffe’s arrest was to be the first among others. The stiff Catholic resistance forced the regime to cancel those arrests that were to follow. After the two-month campaign, the sum result was that some Legionaries registered and some foreign priests were arrested.121 (Time would later reveal that some Legionaries who registered and later denounced the movement were actually secret members of the CCP.)122 But the government did nothing to the majority of Legionaries. The situation had dragged on without resolution. PSB files tell a different story. They say that during the campaign, 409 Legionaries registered with the government and renounced the Legion. This is one of the largest discrepancies I have found among my sources. One reason was that there were most likely many secret registrations over the following years. Otherwise, the following story may help to account for the inconsistency in the sources. Matthew Koo (Gu) Guangzhong was a young member of the Legion. During the registration campaign, he was summoned to his district police station. Once at the station, investigators circled him and ordered him to resign. Gu merely stared straight ahead. In response, police took the teen in temporary custody overnight. In the morning, as he 93

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stood motionless, officers grabbed one of his thumbs, inked it, pressed the print to a piece of paper, then set him free. He was left alone—for a while.123 Apparently, the Legion had won the fi rst battle. Government policy had backfi red and the cadres were forced to back down. They did not expect so many young people to stand fi rm. Catherine Ho states: “Yes! In order to choose what steps to take, it was worth holding fi rm, and this gave the opponents of the Church a sharp warning.”124 But Ho also admits that the clash exacted a heavy price: Actually, we also suffered considerable losses: many young and innocent souls were seriously hurt in this way; some families were greatly affected and the Church began to disintegrate. My beloved sister could no longer stand the threats and as a consequence, got heart disease, from which ten years later she died. This was the fi rst time I witnessed in person self-sacrifice in the Legion of Mary. I can never forget how many brothers and sisters suffered in conscience after they had registered and how everybody suffered pressures of all kinds. Apparently the Communists had given in, yet in reality they were preparing to retaliate and there were signs that a new phase of the persecution was on the way. On the other hand, after this fi rst trial, several dioceses were busy strengthening themselves in spirit, like a petrel before a tempest, flying high and strong in the sky.125 The petrel continued to fly, but a tempest was coming. A year later, Father Matthew Zhang Xibin told them: “Dear Legionaries, you and your families’ tears are pearls in the crown of our Blessed Mother. Your sufferings form bouquets of roses for her. You have won the fi rst battle! However, be vigilant and pray. The devil will not give up easily.”126

Temporary Respite Young Legionaries were convinced that the “devil” would not give up easily. In fact, 1951 had proven to be a brutal one for the church as a whole. Throughout the nation, the trickle of expelled missionaries had become a torrent; the confiscation of church properties was nearly complete; and the Three-Self Movement had begun to gain traction. It was a difficult year for the Shanghai Catholic community as well. But there was a silver lining. The community lost the papal internuncio, 94

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but not the link with the pope himself. It lost the CCB, but not the leadership it had afforded. It lost the Legion, but not those schooled in Legion methods and organization. In fact, the link with the pope remained as strong as ever, for by January of 1952, Pius XII would write his fi rst of three letters to the church in China. In “Cupimus Imprimis,” he told the faithful that they should “be brave and confident,” for the church “will always be under attack, but never be defeated.”127 And it was during these early months of 1952 that an interim truce ensued. Both sides seized the opportunity to reflect on the lessons learned and to strengthen their positions. For the church, the fi rst assault had taught it an important lesson: maintain unity. Legionaries knew that the church had stood behind them during a difficult time. The prayers and sacrifices of the entire Catholic Youth movement had been effective. The majority of Legionaries had refused to register and admit they were “counterrevolutionaries.” Now the Catholic Youth was emboldened. But the church learned a second lesson as well: maintaining unity would demand a high price. To limit the cost, the whole youth movement needed to be prudent and not unnecessarily antagonize the regime. Therefore, even at the beginning of the campaign, the Legion decided to disband. Yet the Legionaries themselves wanted to retain their strong Catholic commitment. In short, they had to find a new home. The catechism group movement was the answer. “Catechism group” was innocuous sounding and was not an offensive name like the Legion of Mary. Further, these groups proved more difficult for the regime to target. In addition, Legionaries who were already part of the catechism group movement would remain members. Those who were not yet part were seamlessly incorporated into the catechism groups. It was a stroke of good fortune that the catechism group movement had preexisted the anti-Legion campaign, and that it was adaptable enough to manage an influx of new members. Thus, the catechism groups survived the dissolution of the Legion, and former Legionaries continued to be active in the catechism groups.128 The nomenclature had changed. The commitment remained intact. It was in this capacity that former Legionaries and other Catholic Youth continued to defend the church. True to their name, the catechism groups taught catechism. Despite the confiscation of the Catholic schools, the traditional Catholic faith would still be passed down to the young. The churches became the new schools, and a strong bond developed between the elite of the Catholic Youth and the priests. One former 95

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Legionary remembers that more than twenty Catholic students from St. John’s (the formerly Anglican-administered school was Shanghai’s top university) met at Christ the King Church with their spiritual director, Francis X. Zhu Shude (Chu Shu-teh), every Sunday after Mass.129 In addition, the regime’s harsh methods against the Legion were causing blowback even among the church leaders most willing to compromise. Louis Jin Luxian, the young Jesuit priest who had challenged church authorities to fi nd a modus vivendi with the CCP, recalls how he began to change his point of view when he saw how the government treated the Legionaries.130 Jin says the Legionaries were simply “innocent” students from good families. In good faith, they had joined a pious association dedicated to prayer and service. Now they were being labeled “counterrevolutionaries” bent on overthrowing the CCP. The attack on the Legion had been vicious, and Jin says such a turn of events was leading to a “catastrophe” for the church. During the temporary respite, the regime, for its part, was also strengthening its position and emboldening the “progressive” Catholics, those who had sided with the regime. First, by the end of 1951, they had their own newsletter called the Courier Dove (Xin Ge). Second, they were trying to divide the rest of the community by politicizing the reception of communion at Mass. Toward the end of every Catholic service, the priest takes the consecrated hosts—in Catholic belief, the very body of Christ—and distributes them to the faithful. It is a sacred moment, and so any disturbance at this point could cause anguish in the community. And it did. Priests felt they had no choice but to refuse communion to those they considered obstinate “apostates” or “schismatics.” Sometimes a low-intensity struggle would break out. Thus, the Catholic community felt that the very sign of Catholic unity—reception of communion—was being used by the regime to divide the church. Here is how the regime’s “divide and destroy” tactic would work. The regime knew that some “progressive” Catholics were forbidden to receive communion. They had contravened church law by siding too closely with the Communist Party. Perhaps they attended party meetings, allowed their children to join CCP youth groups, or were active members of the Catholic Three-Self Movement. Yet the government would still encourage these “progressives” to attend Mass and present themselves for communion at the altar rail. The priests then faced a predicament. If they distributed communion to these “progressives,” it could cause a scandal. It would signal to the rest of the parishioners that 96

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these “progressives” were Catholics in good standing. Then the CCP would have the wedge it needed to divide the church. Finally, the church decided on a solution. Members of the Catholic Youth would stand behind the altar rail and, with an upraised fi nger, alert the priest of the compromised Catholic. The priest would then know to bypass that individual. Even so, denying communion was not a decision to be taken lightly. McCarthy notes that it was “a very complicated matter—it’s safe to say that most of the cases are deliberate snares, because we are known to be without choice about defending Christ’s Body from irreverence. No compromise or concession is possible in that matter.”131 Just who was, and who was not, allowed to receive communion remained a sensitive issue for the security personnel as well. They took great interest in the matter. After Mass, the police would question the priests who had refused communion to the “progressives.” Even McCarthy admits that it was “annoying to have the police interrogating the Fathers after Mass,—but if we want to give the Bread of Life to the true children of the family we must run the risk involved in defending it resolutely.”132 Further, during these months, the police increased their surveillance of the Catholic community and began a battery of interrogations on the incarcerated priests. The pace of the interrogations also picked up. In a deliberate strategy to keep these priests isolated, even those priests who had cells adjacent to each other rarely—if ever—saw each other. The fi rst phase of the interrogations seemed to hit a high point beginning in March of 1952, when both Jean de Leffe and Francis Théry were subjected to a parallel set of interrogations.133 They were questioned about each other and were also asked about the CCB, Legrand’s publications, and the various procurations.134

Underground Novitiates and Special Militant Operations While these intense interrogations were taking place in the prisons, the church was already taking extraordinary steps to ensure its own survival. Parts of the church, in fact, were already beginning to submerge.135 In late 1951, Mary Qian, one of the signatories of the famous “letter in blood,” was recruited to join a secret women’s religious order. She began her six-month period of probation in September. Novitiate, the formal period of religious training, began on March 25, 1952, the Feast of the Annunciation. The group already had eight members. The 97

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women were devout and highly talented. Most were in the medical profession. Some were multilingual. In these young women, the church saw its future: a group that could carry on long after the rest of the church had been dismantled. The CCP, for its part, would later regard the group as a sleeper cell. The idea was simple. The eight underground religious sisters would continue going to school or work. They would also gather occasionally at their headquarters, the two-bedroom apartment of a pediatrician who had once been a Carmelite nun, Alice Pan Yinsheng.136 Before long, the group had to change its meeting location constantly for fear of the surveillance of the local residents’ committees. The genesis of this particular underground house of formation is fascinating. It had already begun two years earlier, in late 1949, and was perhaps the fi rst underground organization in the diocese. The purpose of the group was to serve the church in difficult times. The underground convent was so secret, in fact, that its existence was kept even from Bishop Kung. Although not informing the bishop of a religious community within the boundaries of his own diocese is in direct contravention of church law, it does show the extraordinary lengths to which Catholics were going for their survival. In fact, for reasons of safety, the group had no formal name. It was simply referred to by its code name: Home. Home was founded and supported by the Jesuit mission superior Fernand Lacretelle. Lacretelle, for his part, seemed to want to model a group after the underground religious sisters that survived in France during the revolution and “The Terror.” Clandestine religious communities had survived that brutal persecution some 150 years before. They would do so again. To this end, Emmanuel de Breuvery, a French Jesuit, was appointed its spiritual director. When he returned to France, Yves Raguin, another French Jesuit, took his place. Finally, the direction was left to a gifted young Chinese Jesuit, Louis Jin Luxian. His association with this group would later preoccupy him. In time, Mary Qian, as one of the new members, was told to leave Aurora College for Women and attend nursing school. She was still an unregistered Legionary, after all, and her superiors did not want unnecessary trouble. (Years later, Qian would be told that if she were ever arrested, she could admit to being a Legionary but she was never to divulge the existence of Home.) She was also told to withdraw from church activities, such as the catechism group, in order to keep a lower profile. Her work for the church was to be more concealed now, “a 98

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hidden life which was going to be more trying than open combat.”137 In time, the Jesuits would form an underground novitiate as well. In addition, Francis Xavier Zhu Shude directed a small underground group called the Cause of My Joy.138 It was also during this time that the special militants continued their work, secret even in success.139 Sometime in late spring 1952, the CCP tried to requisition an auxiliary chapel. It was their fi rst attempt to appropriate a church for their own purposes. Catholics feared a domino effect, for if the “progressives” were not challenged at the beginning, the loss of this small chapel would embolden them to take the larger parishes as well. In response, the spiritual director of the special militants, a Chinese Jesuit, called in one of his charges. They both discussed how to counterattack the current campaign. The trouble was that mobilizing opposition in this chapel was a difficult proposition because the Catholics there were politically naïve, and certainly unused to being organized. Ultimately, the militant decided to “sacrifice himself” by emerging from his clandestine work.140 He actively organized the faithful and alerted them of the dangers of a takeover by the “progressives.” His efforts were successful. The CCP’s goals were frustrated. But a price was to be paid. He—along with some associates—were arrested. Luckily for him, other militants came to his rescue. After several months, it was clear that he had become quite ill and was languishing in prison. Two militants then went to the police. They demanded to know how the government could imprison people who had not committed any serious political crime. What these militants had in their favor was that the seventy-seven-year-old French Jesuit, Louis Téteau, had recently died in police custody. They asked how a government—one ostensibly so committed to the people—could allow such things to happen. The special militant was then conditionally released from jail. Another example: supported by the police, some “progressive” Catholics tried to disrupt Mass at St. Ignatius Church. It was a preliminary stage in their efforts to take control of the parish, the largest in Shanghai. Some special militants were notified. They quickly and tactfully mobilized the faithful in nonviolent resistance. The faithful were instructed to write letters to both the police offices and the office that directed the “progressives.” They then mailed these letters from various points throughout the neighborhood. When the letters reached their destinations—the numbers increasing by the day—the respective offices were deluged. 99

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The letters simply asked the government why it wanted to “alienate itself from the respect of the Catholics by supporting those who, in such undemocratic manner, created the troubles.”141 By calling this “undemocratic” behavior, these Catholics presented themselves as good patriots. They also deployed government rhetoric against the government. The following Sunday, rather than dividing Catholic opinion, the “progressives” found themselves isolated, and “had to confront the indignation of the Christians.”142 By using these nonviolent tactics, the Shanghai Catholics had forced the CCP—for the time being—to back down. The regime, for its part, was neither able to divide nor take control of St. Ignatius Church. In fact, throughout the 1951 Christmas season, the CCP continued to target the parishes. The regime would not yet mount a frontal assault on the church as a whole. Rather, as we have seen, it would target a particular parish through a variety of tactics. For example, it would infiltrate “progressives” into the parish, hoping that they might even take positions of authority. It would also increase the number of mandatory political meetings for parishioners, and it would send cadres to visit individual homes. Through the multifaceted campaign, the parishioners were pressured from all directions. In response, the Catholics called for concerted action. The Jesuit youth leaders and the parish priests needed to link their efforts. Youth would be sent to mobilize the key rank-andfile parishioners. In this way, the leaders “used the already solid organization and toughness of the students to establish contacts with the most active elements of their parishes.”143 Thus, the parishioners were no longer isolated or outmaneuvered by the CCP. Catholics of all ages were now bound together “in a common effort.”144 The links forged between the youth and ordinary parishioners would prove effective in the next CCP campaign. For now, it would be the Catholic “masses” that would aid the students.

Thought Reform at Aurora University Even despite these victories, Catholic institutions, especially Aurora University, continued to feel pressure from the merciless beat of the government campaigns. By February 1951, the administration of Aurora was in CCP hands. Yet Aurora still presented problems. It had about 160 Catholic students, the elite of the Catholic Youth, and the regime needed to win them over. The answer was thought reform, the effort to 100

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“ideologically remold” or “brainwash” its subjects. In fact, the thoughtreform movement at Aurora was part of a national campaign. It started in the north and centered on the universities. Thought reform had already begun in Shanghai at nearby Jiaotong University during the early 1952 winter vacation.145 The CCP sent in thirty specially trained cadres, led by three high-level party members, to organize Jiaotong’s three thousand students into a four-phase study session. At these sessions, the students were exhorted to fight corruption, examine their personal faults, confess their bourgeois mentality, and offer a public self-criticism. In early May, it was Aurora’s turn. Thirty cadres were sent from Beijing to Aurora. In the fi rst meetings, many Catholic students absented themselves. Instead, they gathered in the parishes at night to strengthen themselves with prayer. Realizing that they were losing the initiative, Beijing sent another thirty cadres to Aurora. The cadres presented evidence against George Germain, the former Jesuit superior of Aurora: he had mentioned Communist troop movements in his articles to the Vatican Fides News Agency. The CCP also agitated to expel three foreign priests and imprison four Chinese priests. By the end of June, the Catholic Youth at Aurora still remained fi rm. In response, in July, the CCP sent another eighty cadres from Beijing, all specialists on Catholicism. These specialists abandoned the tactic of using the widely ignored large discussion groups. Instead, they organized the Catholic students into small discussion groups where they were forced to study newspaper articles and other items from the press. In the meantime, the Catholic Youth themselves were undergoing a parallel series of “Catholic” indoctrination sessions. Several Jesuit priests—having been barred from their former institution—continued their ministry in a nearby apartment. One of these was the Hungarian John Havas; by many accounts he was one of the most persuasive Jesuits of the time and beloved by the elite of the Catholic Youth. Havas himself was a “refugee” missionary, having fled his previous mission field in China after it fell into PLA hands. He cut a commanding and compelling figure. Because of his Eastern European looks and his thick goatee, his students affectionately called him Father Lenin. Yet—unlike Lenin— Havas had a strong personal hatred of Communism, for he had seen his own homeland fall to the Soviets. Havas was a charismatic speaker and fluent in Mandarin.146 He mesmerized his students with his uncompromising talks. He had a way of 101

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making the spiritual nature of the struggle against Communism more understandable and accessible to the students. We have a rare view of his exhortations from a memoir found among his personal effects when he died. In this account, Havas tells the Aurora students how the Communist Party had attacked the church in his native Hungary. The secret police, he told them, had planted obscene photos in the Jesuits’ rooms in order to defame them. He also told the students the “truth” about how famous churchmen like cardinals Mindszenty of Hungary, Beran of Czechoslovakia, and Stepinac of Yugoslavia had never compromised with Communism. Not surprisingly, Havas was also a fi rm devotee of Our Lady of Fatima. Mary had assured Catholics that Soviet Communism would indeed come to an end, but only if Catholics prayed and did penance. Even before the Communist takeover of Shanghai, Havas appealed to the enthusiasm of the young by organizing his vanguard of militants. His students “were well-trained in their faith, patriotic in their spirit, and longing for their loved ones. All of these qualities gave them a solid disposition to fight the common enemy of all—Communism!”147 Havas spoke in black and white. He encouraged his students to be patriotic, but following Communism was no way to be patriotic, he explained, because the CCP denied both “God and eternal Law.” He told the students, “You can never compromise with the Communists!” Thus: “‘No compromise’ became our motto. Communism is absolutely and fundamentally wrong! There is no common place where we could deal with it.” Communism was “the devil’s own nature working through his human and willing instruments . . .” But Havas also warned his students that there was “no human power on earth” that could “stop Communism.” In fact, he insisted that no “power, or system, or organization can stop Communism from spreading or being a menace.”148 The disappointment must have been palpable. Havas had the students in the palm of his hands. Now he would drive home his point. They had a power greater even than themselves to fight Communism. What was it? The Roman Catholic Church and that only! Because that is Jesus Christ Himself! Look through history. No one and nothing could destroy the rock! No bloodshed nor persecution! Those things brought more and richer branches to the living tree. It is independent of any outside power. Not even death can destroy it. It is invincible, invincible because our Faith is Jesus, the one and only Victor, the objective Truth. Not a subjective Buddhistic 102

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superstition or Mohammed’s sword; not Confucius’ maxims or one from the four hundred different denominations’ private subjective interpretation; not Marx or Lenin’s empty dream! Our religion and faith is not, and cannot be a private matter, because it is an objective, universal, never-changing road to Truth and Life itself. Jesus, Himself, and He with us, in us, by us! Thus we have no other alternative. It is either burning love with Him, or burning hatred without Him. Whoever is not governed by Him will, sooner or later, be conquered by evil, self, world and the devil. As the Communists have discipline by evil unity in their subjective fanaticism, so do we in Jesus, the objective Truth itself. Our Power and Love is Jesus! Our Peace is Jesus! Our Victory is Jesus! And that is the only victory as it was, and is, and will remain forever. . . . But we must Live Jesus!149 As we might surmise, for Havas “the next step was easy.” He would continue to form his students in the way to “live” Jesus. The Catholic students in turn were fortified. The CCP cadres were overheard saying, “‘These Catholics are different and the Aurora [sic] is not Yen-Tsin [Yanjing], the Protestant University.” Another was heard saying, “Yes, and Shanghai is not Peking [Beijing].”150 But there were other reasons—besides Havas’s animated exhortations—that help to account for Aurora’s stiff resistance. There were other reasons why the cadres could not crack the resistance as readily as they had done in Beijing. In fact, the resistance at Aurora was stronger even than at China’s other Catholic universities.151 It was not simply explained by the links forged between the Catholic “masses” and the militants, nor by the long years of preparation of the “hardened” Catholic students, nor even by the fiery Havas and his inspiring lectures. It was also explained by the careful homework done by the Aurora militants.152 In fact, they had gathered intelligence from the cadres themselves, for it seems that some of these cadres had imprudently leaked information to their Catholic peers. According to the “Notations,” the Catholic students already knew about the impending thought-reform campaign, including its four major phases, as early as the 1952 summer vacation when the cadres were beginning the advance planning. Armed with such insider information, the Catholic students were thus able to meet the threat head on. From the beginning, then, the Jesuits called together a large number of leaders and key militants.153 They needed to fight this battle in the 103

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open, and so they began to mobilize the parishes as well. They prepared a special series of sermons that focused on the key meditations of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. The hope was that by calling attention to the supernatural destiny of believers and of their roles in God’s plan, Catholics would have a better perspective on what was at stake. They would face the future with less fear. In fact, for these Jesuits, their defense of the faith was completely rooted in and animated by the Spiritual Exercises. Therefore, just when thought reform was launched, the parishes of St. Ignatius and St. Peter’s also launched the new sermon series. The series was repeated again at St. Peter’s and Aurora as well just fifteen days later: “Since the Communists hammered away, the spiritual mobilization of the city intensified.”154 Because of these bold moves, Aurora University continued to be a source of embarrassment for the CCP. In response, CCP cadres targeted the uncompromising Hungarian. But they were patient. They needed to build a careful case against him, and so, once again, they “fi shed with a long line.” Havas had long known that there were informers among his students. Who were they? He could only suspect, but he would later fi nd out that, “they knew everything about me, and in detail, not only my activities, but talks, retreats, and even private words.”155 They knew who had come to visit him and how many times. The police proceeded on other fronts as well. In July they targeted Germain, the former superior (and long-term president) of Aurora. Germain was now the treasurer for both the mission and the diocese. On July 22, two police officers took him from his new residence at St. Joseph’s Parish. Newspaper accounts noted that in four of Germain’s letters to the Fides News Agency in 1933 and 1934, he had mentioned the advance of the Communist army. According to Germain, he was simply explaining how the missions functioned within the political and military context of the time. The account further asserted that in 1927, he had a Communist student at Aurora arrested and sent to the police headquarters of the French Municipal Council. Germain would later recount his own sixteen days in prison thus: “After endless daily and nightly questioning and under the fi re of cameras and movies, I was condemned to be expelled.”156 Then the local PSB collected the petition signed by the Aurora students. The Shanghai MCC on August 7 stated: “Ever since he came to reside in China in 1921, Germain has been carrying out imperialist espionage activities under the cloak of religion.”157 A rally was held at 104

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Aurora the same day. The Shanghai News Daily showed a facsimile of Germain’s signed deposition in which he admitted his crimes, especially the 1927 arrest of the Communist student: After education given to me by the People’s Government, I understand now my wrong doing. Such an act was possible only under the hated regime of the Concessions [former colonial authorities] and I know now how painful it is for the Chinese people to have one of its children arrested by foreigners, and how harmful it was for the Students’ progressive movement which was part of the Revolution at that time; and in so doing I took part in the suppression of it.158 The real reason for Germain’s arrest seems to have been that he was one of Bishop Kung’s most trusted confidants. It appears that by expelling the priest who held the purse strings for the diocese and many religious congregations, the CCP wanted to bring pressure to bear on Bishop Kung. In fact, Germain’s prison stay was short, and his confession about events that occurred decades before was a simple enough face-saving measure. Years later, fellow Jesuits would speculate that the “clemency was generally attributed to the influence of former Aurora students, who though high in the Communist hierarchy, had not lost their reverence for their old Rector.”159 But the rallies did not end. There was one in early August in which Hu Wenyao denounced Germain. There was another one in mid-August. At this rally, the CCP presented a convert to their cause. She was one of the student leaders arrested back in April 1951, during the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement. Havas calls her Barbara U. Other sources give her Chinese name, Ying Mulan. Havas explains the events: Barbara U was from the “brave vanguard” and one of the best trained of catechists. On that day in August, the entire university gathered for a rally. Then, much to their surprise, Ying Mulan got on the stage. The students had not seen her since her arrest. The new “patriot” confessed that her thinking had been poisoned by the Legion of Mary. She denounced Havas, several other priests, and her old friends.160 Eighteen months in prison had broken her. Aurora’s Catholic students were devastated. They had been publicly humiliated. One of the “vanguard” of the Catholic Youth had turned on them. It was all the more painful because this “stormbreaker,” as Havas referred to her, was once recognized as one of the three pillars of the 105

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Catholic Youth. Her name alone called to mind the legendary Chinese heroine, Mulan. In fact, her Catholic pedigree was unassailable. Her grandfather was the first director of Furen, the Catholic university in Beijing. Yet the Catholic Youth would not give up on Ying Mulan. Havas met with her for a special discussion in his apartment. Meanwhile, the Catholic Youth gathered outside and prayed that she would return to the faith. They prayed the rosary and sang the martyr’s last pledges of loyalty. The meeting with the formidable Havas lasted six hours. Finally, Ying Mulan returned to the faith. The CCP, for its part, had had enough of the fiery Havas. McCarthy would state laconically, “An Hungarian SJ was put in the clink here Sept 10; he had a considerable and excellent apostolate with university students.”161 By the beginning of August, it was clear that the CCP had failed to “convert” the Aurora students and to put them under the direction of a pliable administration. The party also failed in its goal to transform Aurora into “the intellectual and administrative center of the schismatic church in all China.”162 The regime came up with another solution. Aurora University was now restructured. It became the Shanghai Second Medical College.

Taking Stock: September 1952 There were further efforts of conciliation between the Shanghai Catholic community and the regime. Perhaps increasing confrontation was not the only solution. On September 22, 1952, diocesan representatives met with the Religious Affairs Bureau for East China. For their part, neither Bishop Kung nor vice mayor Pan Hannian attended. This meeting, stiff as it was, inaugurated another period of peace. Once again, each side took stock and reviewed its respective position. The church had survived the fi rst year and a half under the CCP, but now the situation was getting dire. Germain had been expelled. As treasurer, he knew best the fi nancial situation of the Shanghai Catholic community. Further, the whole China mission was losing the confidence of some in Rome as well. Riberi and Germain, now both in Hong Kong, learned that the subsidies from Propaganda Fide for 1951 had not been paid, and there was no news about subsidies for 1952. Propaganda Fide had apparently decided not to continue to fund the missions in China, “which [were], according to their false judgment, entirely lost.”163 106

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The institutional footprint of the church continued to decline as well. Even the once-robust Zikawei (Xujiahui) Jesuit School of Theology, the pride of Catholic Shanghai, was in bad shape. By May 1952, the majority of Jesuit theology students—mostly foreigners—had moved to the Philippines to study in Quonset huts at the rapidly established “Zikawei-in-exile.” The Zikawei Jesuit theology community itself fell from eighty-two to twenty-eight Jesuits. (Some Jesuit seminarians later came to believe that there was an understanding with the regime: if the foreign seminarians left on their own accord, they would not be forcibly imprisoned or expelled.) For McCarthy, the superior of the “Zik,” the diminishment was especially hard to watch.164 Yet the church also gained some unexpected benefits because of these departures, for the church was rapidly indigenizing. As foreign missionaries either left or were expelled, the church was less vulnerable to the charge that it was run by foreigners. And as more foreign Catholics left, the church itself became increasingly Chinese. With the expulsions and departures of Jesuits, an important threshold was crossed in July 1952. McCarthy reported that there were now 132 Jesuits in the city, evenly divided between Chinese and foreigners. The Jesuits were taking on a more Chinese profile. Yet church indigenization also came at a price, for in the same letter, as McCarthy noted, “78 had to leave in the past two years, six are here behind bars, and two died in custody this past year.”165 Although some of its key leaders had been taken into custody, and had even died in prison, the Shanghai church had so far been fortunate enough to be spared the massive arrests already made in such places as Beijing and Tianjin. The city had also been spared the near complete expulsion of foreign missionaries that had already occurred in the rest of China by 1951. In addition, Shanghai Catholics were perfecting their spiritual weapons. Even CCP documents refer to the Catholic’s “spiritual authority” (shenquan). As early as April 1952, many Catholics were calling upon Beda Chang to perform miracles. The CCP was afraid that Chang might be canonized a saint. In response, the police called in a representative of the bishop. He was asked if the bishop was going to canonize Beda Chang. The priest insisted that the bishop did not have this power. It was to no avail. The authorities warned him that they would hold the bishop responsible for any miracles performed by Beda Chang. The irony, of course, was that the cadres were supposed to be atheistic materialists who did not believe in supernatural activity. Writing on 107

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other religious events that occurred in China during this time, Steve A. Smith notes that, in fact, the regime was continually frustrated over “the gulf that existed between the scientific rationality and materialist epistemology of the party-state and the beliefs of millions of its subjects.”166 Facing such threats, the church had to continually adapt. It was using sophisticated organizational techniques, even those that paralleled the techniques used by the CCP. One of these techniques was to go underground. To this end, by mid-1952, more parts of the church became clandestine. There were already the special militants, the underground convent, and at least one secret prayer group. Now a clandestine Jesuit novitiate was added to the ranks. It was a necessary development because the normal Jesuit novitiate was at that time in exile in the Philippines. Yet young Chinese continued to present themselves as candidates for the Jesuits. In fact, at the time, up to forty young men were considering a Jesuit vocation. The high numbers, no doubt, were due to the “heroism” they witnessed in the church in the current climate. In addition, as many of these men already came from the ranks of the most committed Catholic Youth, taking the next step and becoming a Jesuit seemed logical enough. These men needed a place to be trained. Thus began the small underground Jesuit novitiate. It was put under the direction of two French Jesuits. Even despite these developments, the attacks on the church were taking their toll. Frederick Teiwes sums up this period. The relentless campaigns indicated to broad sections of society the full extent of the Party’s aims for social transformation. As the emphasis shifted from reassurance to tightening control, many groups that had hitherto been left basically alone were now drawn into the vortex of directed struggle. By the end of 1952 the CCP had become, for the majority of China’s urban population, a force to be reckoned with.167 Originally, most Chinese had no idea how far the CCP would go with its social transformation. In the cities, at least, it was becoming painfully clear that the CCP wanted full mastery over its subjects. The party would soon begin to encroach on the cultural, religious, and family life of its citizens. Having been “drawn into the vortex of directed struggle,” each group that resisted was crushed. Opposition to the CCP’s ambitious plans was crumbling throughout China. But not in Shanghai.

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But, as always, the great grace is the Cross. This is a time when the vineyard of God is being ploughed, with a ploughshare cruciform, deep and sharp. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], May 23, 1953

The Shanghai Catholic community had been damaged, but the Shanghai CCP had also sustained setbacks. So far, the church “reform” movement had largely failed in Shanghai, as had thought reform at Aurora. Shanghai Catholics would not be “reformed” in any way if it meant breaking ties with the universal church. Neither side had backed down at the September 1952 meeting. An uneasy peace ensued, during which time both sides continued to strengthen their positions. The church had learned that the presence of foreign missionaries was an asset, but also a liability. The wounds of imperialism and the sins of past missionaries were still fresh in the minds of some Chinese, most notably those in the CCP. Appealing to nationalism and calling on Chinese citizens to sweep out imperialism were the best cards that the CCP could play. To this end, by the middle of 1953, the party began its second “strike hard” attack on the church. This attack would focus exclusively on purging the church of “imperialist influence.” Catholics strengthened themselves with more liturgical celebrations, among the best spiritual weapons at their disposal. Bishop Kung led the way, and some high-profile celebrations took place during the following months. On October 26, 1952, Kung celebrated a Mass at Christ the King for the titular feast of the parish. In honor of Our Lady of Fatima, 1953 was proclaimed a year of the rosary. The rosary would be recited continuously by rotating pairs of the faithful throughout the year, in the parishes by day and in the homes by night. Further, at a gathering 109

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of Catholic Youth in early 1953, the Jesuit Louis Wang Rensheng said, “This past year was one of resistance, the coming year will be one of victory.”1 Given the heady atmosphere, Catholics might be forgiven for thinking they would actually outlast the regime. For their part, ever malleable, the cadres wisely shifted—if not their goal—then their tactics. If Shanghai Catholics would not yet break with the “imperialist” Vatican, then perhaps, by still appealing to nationalism, they could be convinced to break ties with the “imperialists” still left within the Shanghai church. Hu Wenyao went to Beijing after the September meeting for further instructions and returned to Shanghai in February 1953 “with a more conciliatory tone.”2 This may have been a cover, for by the next month, the tocsin of battle was again sounded. It sounded like this: the church would be “purged” of “imperialists” and their “running dogs.” By defi nition, the “imperialists” were the remaining foreign missionaries, especially the priests. From a high of 2,500 foreign priests in China in 1949, there were now about 100 left, three-quarters of them based in Shanghai. The “running dogs” were the Chinese clergy, especially the Chinese Jesuits, who belonged to an international religious order based in Rome. Some leading priests had already been arrested, the Legion of Mary banned, and nearly all Catholic schools and charitable institutions had been confiscated. In response, Shanghai Catholics, especially the youth, began to rally around three major parishes: Christ the King in the north, St. Peter’s just to its south, and St. Ignatius in Xujiahui to the west. Together they formed the “Catholic triangle” of resistance. We have seen the importance of both Aurora and Xujiahui; now let us turn our attention to Christ the King Parish, which was fast emerging as a key point in the resistance, a command and control center of the church militant.

Christ the King Parish The Catholic schools had been confiscated, yet the Catholic Youth had sustained its organization: the tight-knit catechism groups. But organizations depend on institutions. In other words, the Catholic Youth needed a place to meet. They soon found a home at Christ the King. The parish was an unlikely candidate as a center for the Catholic Youth, for it had three major liabilities: it catered to foreigners, it was located in the central business district, and it was tiny. Yet each of these liabilities would soon be transformed into important assets. 110

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First, Christ the King was an expatriate parish that ministered mainly to the Portuguese business class, many of whom were Shanghai born. These Portuguese were often fluent in both English and Shanghaiese, and so they served as intermediaries between foreign fi rms and local businesses. They were compradors in the truest sense of the word. Yet by 1952, many of them had fled Shanghai. Further, Christ the King was itself administered by foreigners: the Jesuits of the California Province, whose future in China was now in jeopardy. (In fact, California Jesuits stationed in nearby Yangzhou had been expelled in 1951, just two years after Yangzhou was formally made a mission of the California Jesuits.) The California Jesuits could see the writing on the wall. In April 1953, McCarthy would bluntly state, “We did not come so far to conduct a parish for foreigners.”3 In fact, the California Jesuits had begun preparing for their own departure as early as the end of 1951, when they handed the parish over to two young Chinese Jesuits: a pastor, Francis X. Zhu Shude (Chu Shu-teh); and an assistant pastor, Vincent Zhu Hongsheng.4 (The priests were both part of the well-known Zhu Catholic kinship network and so shared a common ancestor.) California Jesuits remained on staff, but McCarthy, the senior ranking California Jesuit in Shanghai, gave the rationale for the change: “Good men will be there if an abrupt departure of ours is demanded; psychologically for the Christians, it’s important that they feel we’re not clinging to control at all cost.”5 In addition, because of the “Catholic revival,” more and more Chinese had begun to attend Christ the King. Their number had grown both proportionally and in absolute numbers. By the fall of 1952, the parish was already 90 percent Chinese. Because of this, all the Masses had Chinese sermons, and the last English sermon was moved to a nearby convent chapel. (In those days Mass was celebrated in Latin, the universal language of the Catholic Church.) The sum result was this: originally an expatriate parish, Christ the King was now rapidly indigenizing, both in terms of clergy and laity. And the risks taken in indigenizing the parish were paying off. “The ministry has been phenomenal this past year,” McCarthy wrote in July 1952, “partly because the need is so great, and partly because the shift of attention from foreign to the Chinese parishioners was effected smoothly and generously. The two Chinese Fathers in the community are zealous and courageous, fitting in well with our Califs.”6 Second, Christ the King was located in the central business district, a lightly populated area with few Christians. Yet because it was in the 111

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central city, it was accessible to the working population. It was also close to some of the recently nationalized Catholic schools. The old St. Joan of Arc High School and Aurora Women’s College, home to many former Legionaries, were located nearby, and many Catholic students remained in these schools. In addition, since religious education classes at the former Catholic schools were replaced with political indoctrination classes, the Catholic students were glad to come together for Catholic fellowship after school hours. They assembled at Christ the King. In short, even though religious education in the schools was outlawed and the Legion of Mary banned, the Sodalists and the former Legionaries, as we have seen, now joined forces in the catechism groups. Thus, Christ the King became a main venue for the growing catechism groups. Third, the parish itself was tiny and only able to accommodate at most four hundred parishioners. Yet even this liability masked important assets. First, many found the church space warm and intimate. Second, although the parish building itself was small, it was located on a compound, a campus of sorts with a backyard, a front square, a garden, tennis courts, and an athletic field.7 The latter could be used for religious activities such as outdoor processions and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Third, much of this extra space was, in time, equipped with loudspeakers. For large events, between one thousand and two thousand people could congregate in and around the parish “campus” and still hear the message being preached inside the church. If the church itself was small, the church compound was blessed with excellent facilities. There was a three-floor rectory-parish center at the rear of the church. The third floor was mostly living and storage space. The second floor had six rooms for the priests, a dining room, a library, and a recreation room. The ground floor had several parlors and meeting rooms that could accommodate thirty to ninety people each. It also had a large auditorium that could seat 150. A Catholic Youth of the time notes that they did “homework, had choir practices, doctrine classes, sports and all kinds of activities on the church grounds. The entire downstairs area of the rectory . . . was occupied by students of different ages.”8 Thus, each of Christ the King’s major liabilities had been become assets: it had an intimate feeling, a central location, and excellent facilities. The transformation was evidenced in the numbers. There was clearly a spiritual boom at Christ the King. By mid-1952, six Masses were said every Sunday. McCarthy would note the parish’s impressive statistics for the year ending June 20, 1952: “more than 158,000 Holy 112

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Communions, and more than 39,000 Confessions. . . . three times the number in 1946—when we thought we were doing well, and the foreign Catholics were 25 times as numerous as now.”9 What this meant was that, when divided by the 3,000 parishioners, the parish had an average of about 500 communions and 100 confessions a day for the year.10 But nowhere was Christ the King’s strength more apparent than in its intensive youth formation. For Christ the King was now the de facto base of the Catholic Youth and the catechism and retreat movements. Moreover, the Catholic Youth were strengthened by biannual three-day retreats. The necessity of these retreats was clear: “Any favorable mention of religion is taboo in all the schools now, and the younger generation is exposed to torrential anti-religious propaganda.”11 To conform to the school calendar, the biannual retreats were held during the summer and winter school vacations. Christ the King hosted the lion’s share of the retreats. Already during the Lunar New Year vacation of February 1952, Christ the King had hosted eight successive retreats for both teachers and students. The retreats were given to “75 teachers, 83 and 148 university students, 65 and 84 senior middle school [students], 182 junior middle school students, and then to 350 and 200 grade school pupils respectively.”12 The same was true a year later, when Christ the King held fourteen of the twenty-five student retreats given.13 The sum result was that 1,670 students made the early 1953 winter retreats, and 900 of them made them at Christ the King.14 The vitality of Christ the King drew the attention of the youth’s most ardent patron: Bishop Kung. Most of the important events scheduled between the bishop and the youth were held at Christ the King. For example, the Mass of the Holy Ghost was held in the fall in order to prepare for the new academic year. McCarthy describes the scene at one such mass held for Catholic middle school students on October 4, 1952: About 700 youngsters filled the church to overflowing. Bishop Kiong [Kung] presided in the sanctuary; he spoke to the students before the mass in the former lawn tennis court behind the rectory. It’s wonderful to see how solicitous he is for their spiritual welfare, how ready to trouble himself to help them, and how responsive and grateful they are towards him.15 The college and university students had their own Mass of the Holy Ghost with the bishop on November 8 with 250 attending.16 But one of the largest of these gatherings at Christ the King occurred on New 113

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Year’s Day 1953, when 1,300 student representatives from 120 schools gathered. They marched in school colors on the parish grounds to honor Bishop Kung. Catholic Youth fondly remember their time at Christ the King. Church activities and choir practices raised their spirits in tough times, as Philomena Hsieh recalls: “[W]e laughed and enjoyed ourselves as if there were no threat of persecution. There were times when everything seemed almost normal except that many familiar faces were absent.”17 The youth’s example also deeply moved their spiritual mentors, as Charles McCarthy proclaims: “The generosity of the young people, their eagerness to know Jesus and serve Him without reserve, makes me ashamed that I give so little: and it makes me wonder whether in other places or at other times we ask enough of youth in Christ’s Name.”18 Needless to say, the CCP had its own understanding of what was happening at Christ the King and with the Catholic Youth. It was not local initiative, but American influence, that was causing the problems: After World War II and the success of the Anti-Japanese War, American influence gradually penetrated the Shanghai Catholic Church . . . and American Jesuits came to Shanghai and controlled both the seminaries and the important Christ the King Parish respectively. . . . At the same time they [the Kung clique] used religion as a cover to poison young people from the families of the comprador, landlord, and bourgeois classes in anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, and anti-people thought, and organized these young people into the “Catholic Youth” organization. They numbered about 1,000 people. [They] used the youth’s religious fanaticism, to serve as the mainstay to carry out counterrevolutionary activity.19

Sermon Series All of the above reasons made Christ the King a kind of “sacred ground where illustrious people thrive” (renjie diling de hao difang).20 Christ the King Parish was clearly the center of the Catholic Youth. But the parish also influenced Catholics of all ages, even those who lived outside the parish boundaries. Christ the King also exported to the other parishes some of its best ideas, the greatest of which was to launch a sermon series. In fact, it was a wise choice because the parishes were one of the last places the police still allowed the church to operate freely. 114

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Having a sermon every night was nothing new in Shanghai, but the idea of a sermon series seems to begin with Thomas Phillips, a California Jesuit, and Christ the King’s assistant pastor. Phillips knew that—in these difficult times—the priests had to continually form, not only the youth, but all the Catholic laity. The best way to do so was to inaugurate a series of doctrinal sermons. These sermons would be held in the parish at night, after most people were fi nished with work. In order to attract listeners, preparation was crucial. Phillips himself describes the types of sermons needed: “It would not do merely to give emotional harangues, or simple explanations of the Gospel. These were to be meaty, wellthought-out orations, thoroughly prepared and instructive, calculated to deepen the knowledge and enrich the faith of the listeners.”21 In time, they would be called the “sermons of martyrdom.”22 Phillips had asked Vincent Zhu Hongsheng to prepare the talks. Yet Zhu found himself in a quandary. After dinner one night, he commiserated with seven or eight fellow Chinese Jesuits. How could he possibly prepare twelve or more thoughtful talks in such short order? They struck up a plan. The priests would divide the work among themselves and give their talks on a rotating basis. They knew that to make the series a success, they needed to use the best Jesuit orators in the city. By necessity, they all had to be fluent in the Shanghai dialect. This group of Jesuits would form the kernel of the preaching band. The best-known Jesuit orator in the city was the “eloquent” Francis Xavier Cai Shifang, pastor of the immense St. Ignatius Church, where he was already preaching a “pulpit catechism” almost every night.23 McCarthy notes his abilities: “[T]he people never get tired of him; [he] always seems to have something to say, and a good deal of art in saying it. He used to read a great deal, and gave points [for meditation] nightly to the junior seminarians; so his mind is well stored with material. He’s very prayerful, too, which explains why he can really move hearts.”24 Cai Shifang, it is clear, would be a major draw. There were other gifted Jesuits as well in the preaching band: Louis Jin Luxian, who was now the rector of the major seminary; Gabriel Chen Tianxiang, secretary to the provincial; Louis Wang Rensheng, pastor of St. Peter’s Church; Joseph Chen Yuntang, seminary professor; and Francis X. Zhu Shude and Vincent Zhu Hongsheng, pastor and assistant pastor of Christ the King. It is also no accident that the priests in the preaching band were also on the leadership team that led the entire Catholic Youth movement. 115

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There is some ambiguity in the sources as to when the sermon series actually began. McCarthy begins to mention them in his letters of mid1952. Francis X. Cai Shifang says the after-dinner meeting of the key Jesuit preachers occurred in 1950.25 Yet it is not clear whether Cai is referring to the sermon series specifically or to the whole retreat and formation movement more generally. The “Notations” tell us what we already know, namely, that St. Ignatius already had a sermon 365 nights a year. These began as early as 1950 or 1951, although they were not yet part of a series.26 The best way to reconcile this information is to say that these young Jesuits were already formed into something of a preaching band even before others, even foreign Jesuits, took note of the growing strength of the sermon series. At any rate, the sermon series was in full swing by May 1952. Each sermon series, though unique, followed some rough guidelines. The method itself was quite simple. The night would begin at 6:00 p.m., which was after work for most people. The congregation would pray the rosary, the priest would then speak for thirty minutes, and Eucharistic benediction would follow. The sermon series would often begin at Christ the King. Later, McCarthy would reflect that there was a “psychological” reason why the sermon series would often begin there: “The church is small, and it is sure to have an overflow crowd.”27 A good start would thus almost assure the series’ success. The preaching band would then rotate among six or seven of the major parishes of the city.28 Sometimes the series would travel to the major non-Jesuit parishes as well. As for numbers, Bishop Kung had originally hoped thirty people might attend each session. In fact, hundreds attended, and thousands on the more successful nights. In time, the crowds at Christ the King became so large that the Jesuits used loudspeakers to broadcast the sermons throughout the parish grounds. In fact, the numbers at the various parishes sometimes reached two thousand to three thousand. The gathering of such large crowds had another effect. They caused the police to think twice about arresting the priests. On May 31, 1951, when the police tried to arrest the pastor of St. Ignatius, the youth occupied the rectory, and the police had to assure them that they meant no harm. 29 McCarthy’s letter of October 20, 1952, provides one of the richest ground-level descriptions of the series.30 In this particular series nearly all the preachers mentioned above—“fi rst-team all the way”—would offer a series of seven sermons leading up to the October 26 feast day of Christ the King. The contents were pure Christology, dense and systematic to 116

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the average listener: Christ and God, Christ and the universe, Christ and the church, the Kingdom of Christ, the Priesthood of Christ, the Triumph of Christ, and the King of Kings. This specific sermon series would rotate among the three Jesuit parishes of the “Catholic triangle”: Christ the King, St. Peter’s, and St. Ignatius. Bishop Kung would celebrate the closing Mass on the Feast of Christ the King in the parish of the same name. There were other topics as well, often classic Catholic doctrine and history.31 In terms of doctrine, the priests reviewed the seven sacraments, the creeds of the church, and the nature of the papacy. Controversial historical examples were not excluded: persecution under the Romans, the Jesuit Martyrs of Elizabethan England, and the unfathomable evil of Adolph Hitler. Often enough, the sermon series was designed to answer the current CCP attacks. The same, of course, was true of the weekly discussion points in the catechism groups. Therefore, there was a link between the content of the sermon series and of the catechism groups, as both responded, as urgently as possible, to the latest government campaigns.32 There were variations as well. Some sermon series ran concurrently, and some extended the range of preachers to include newly ordained Chinese Jesuits. Eight of them preached on the Beatitudes in the late summer Sundays of 1952. They also started a series on the seven sacraments in early September, which was scheduled to end in November. Once that session was fi nished, there would be another series of sermons specifically on the supernatural life which was scheduled to start on December 7. 33 Another set of six sermons about the life and vocation of St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary, began on November 28 and ended on December 3, the feast day of the saint. 34 In mid-May 1953, the preaching band focused another series on Christ: the way, the truth, and the life. 35 There was an added attraction: the priests practiced what they preached, for the laity knew the priests were putting their lives on the line. And the more the priests saw how thirsty the people were for the “word of God,” the more they spoke out. The sum result was that these talks had a huge effect on strengthening the Catholic population: When the Christians saw the bravery of the Chinese Fathers in preaching precisely on the great truths that were under attack, a veritable affection, tinged with veneration, grew within them 117

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for ‘their’ Fathers. Little by little a new atmosphere created itself. The courage of the Chinese Fathers became contagious and people were inspired to follow their lead. . . . The impressive silence of these crowds eager to hear the truth proclaimed, and the overwhelming fervor of their prayers, created an ambiance of Christian community like that of the fi rst centuries.36 Yet challenging CCP indoctrination with the “sermons of martyrdom” was a risky proposition. The dangers were clear as early as May 1952 when McCarthy wrote, “I’m rather worried about the two young Chinese Fathers who do much of the preaching [Francis X. Zhu Shude and Vincent Zhu Hongsheng]. They’ve been working a full year on the principle that they’ll soon be in the jug and they’d better get in their licks while they can. . . . So they’ve spent all their reserve and are desperately tired.”37 The series, of course, did not escape notice. The CCP moved to counteract their influence. Christ the King itself was designated an imperialist headquarters. The police took over a building facing the parish, then brought in propaganda trucks with loudspeakers to blare warnings and disrupt the services. Soon the five “imperialists” at Christ the King, the remaining American Jesuits, were targeted. Their phones were tapped, and they were shadowed whenever they left the church grounds, making it unsafe to visit parishioners.38 According to McCarthy, the laity were constantly “questioned and prodded concerning us.”39 In such an environment, the priests could easily have become paralyzed by fear; that was precisely what the police wanted.40

CCP Practice Maneuvers: March to June 1953 The main reason why the regime had been unsuccessful in its campaign against the church was that Catholic unity remained intact. Many Catholics feared that, if they joined the progressives, they would be excommunicated. Even being denied the sacraments was often punishment enough for most Catholics to resist breaking ranks. Fear of being outside the fold of the “true” church was a powerful motivator in keeping the church unified, but there were other factors as well. For one thing, the campaigns against the church only further stiffened Catholic resolve. It was clear that many Catholics were willing to put their lives on the line to defend the church. Years later another missionary would recount the effect those years had on him: 118

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From 1951 to 1953 Shanghai became a vast arena where we foreigners watched and were astounded. We witnessed numerous conversions and heard eloquent oratory by the Chinese clergy. Our Chinese Catholics cared for us like they never had before, and even before they had cared for us. At times we were speechless, and little did we suspect the spiritual depth and courage of our Chinese Catholics.41 Writing in April 1953, McCarthy seconds his confrere’s assessment. He attributes the strength of Catholic unity to shared adversity, good leadership, and supernatural assistance: As for Shanghai, certainly, what we have gone through has brought the people and clergy closer together than before, and has heightened the intensity of Catholic life in the great majority of Christians young and old. The diocesan and regular [religious order] clergy are on much better terms, too, thanks to saintly guidance by Bishop Kiong [Kung] and Fr. Lacretelle; and there is more understanding and affection between Chinese and foreign priests (and people), although that is where the party aimed fi rst and most persistently to create a rift. Confl ict is the motor in the cp [CCP] machine, and according to their books it must arise among and against all non-conformists; but they reckon without the grace and the charity of Christ!42 A month later McCarthy would write: “The Chinese priests generally have shown understanding and charity towards the rest of us, and have kept united among themselves, in a degree that can’t be explained naturally.”43 Yet it was precisely this fault line between the Chinese and foreign clergy that the CCP would exploit next. It was time to directly attack the “imperialists and their running dogs.” The plan—parts of which had been in the works for at least a year—was quite simple. The CCP would arrest and interrogate high-value foreign priests, usually those in charge of leadership and fi nance. Americans were considered the most imperialist of all. Other, lower-profile foreign clergy would be placed under house arrest and eventually be expelled in small groups over the next few months. Living in the same quarters as the foreign Jesuits, many Chinese Jesuits would be sequestered in their rooms and interrogated on site. Chinese diocesan clergy, except for the most charismatic leaders, were to be pressured but not jailed in large numbers. The hope was 119

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to create divisions in the church, both between the foreign and Chinese clergy, and among the Chinese clergy as well. Having been purged of the “imperialists” and sufficiently intimidated by state power, the native clergy would then be given two options: join the “reformed” church or be sent to jail. Some Chinese priests would even be approached to head the independent church in Shanghai. The situation grew increasingly tense. When Joseph Stalin died in mid-March, the Chinese regime mandated a three-day period of mourning. Three to four security agents sat in on various Masses.44 Then the CCP had a practice maneuver, a foray, on March 24, when six priests and seven Catholic laymen were arrested. Two of the priests, Belgian missionaries of the Society of Helpers of the Mission, were Alain de Terwagne and Clement Renirkens. Renirkens had been secretary to Bishop Simon Zhu Kaimin of Haimen, which made him an important target. Alain de Terwagne, for his part, was simply a book illustrator at the CCB. Yet both were accused of being spies for Fides, the news agency for the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Terwagne played right into CCP hands. He was accused of using secret codes to send sensitive military information abroad. The fi rst part of the accusation was true. Terwagne had resisted the Nazis in World War II, during which time he had learned the art of secret codes. He even showed some of these techniques to the young Shen Baoyi, a secretary to Bishop Kung. One can question the prudence of using the same techniques learned in Nazi-occupied Europe in the charged atmosphere of 1950s Shanghai, but Terwagne was no spy. The CCP had a field day. Later they would produce a fi lm about Terwagne’s crimes, and the propaganda bonanza was recycled from time to time in the newspapers. Other ominous events came to a head in March. McCarthy reported that an increased number of lapsi, those who were effectively barred from the sacraments for their divisive actions, sought readmission to the church. (In fact, one of the highest profile lapsi was Lu Weidu, the son of the Catholic philanthropist Lo Pahong.) For those lapsi who wanted to return to the church, Bishop Kung demanded that they fi rst publicly retract their actions. They were then to do serious penance, such as carry a cross in public. Already by December 1952 there were five such public retractions at St. Peter’s alone.45 Could these lapsi be trusted? McCarthy lists some of the difficulties: “Rather stringent conditions and a period of probation are required of the lapsi, because we are now in a phase of the outstretched hand, and some of the unholy have orders to get back inside 120

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at any cost.”46 In short, some Catholic leaders feared that these lapsi had ulterior motives for wanting to rejoin the church. “It’s delicate work sifting the sheep from the goats,” McCarthy would conclude.47 The CCP made its next move in May when it called in some Chinese priests to various police stations. They were treated cordially enough but warned as well. McCarthy notes: “There had been a strong rumor afloat that the month of May would see a renewed campaign for the ouster of foreign missionaries. It seems that several of the Chinese Fathers were called more or less officially, and broad hints were dropped to them that no adverse comments should be made by them in case of action against Imperialist elements.”48 The richest evidence available for the CCP’s subsequent move comes from a dossier produced in mid-June 1953 and now housed in the Shanghai Municipal Archives. The dossier is titled “Notification Concerning Attacking and Expelling the Imperialists within the Shanghai Catholic Church.”49 It contains a series of drafts, which give an insider’s account of propaganda in the making. (It was necessary for the Propaganda Department to produce the material in advance to have it ready the morning after what would undoubtedly be a series of successful arrests.) One draft reveals the goals: Shanghai is going to start to expel the imperialists within the Shanghai Catholic Church. This is an intensive and fierce struggle. We will make a decisive attack on the imperialists hidden within the Catholic Church. We will launch a universal anti-imperialist patriotic movement among Catholic believers, and change the situation in which imperialism manipulates the Catholic Church to carry out conspiratorial activities. We will gradually clean up imperialist influence in the Catholic Church. The key to complete victory in the struggle is to do good propaganda and education work. We will widely and deeply mobilize people, especially those within the church to actively participate in this struggle, and make those who are fooled by the imperialists to recognize that imperialism is actually using religion to endanger our people and our country’s interest. We will draw a clear line between religious belief and imperialist conspiracies. This will benefit national largescale economic reconstruction and enhance national defense. And it has significant meaning in completely cleaning up imperialist influence in China.50 121

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The document paints with a broad brush: the Shanghai Catholic Church is intimately linked with imperialism. It has provided protective cover for imperialists who obstruct national reconstruction and endanger the national interest. Action must be taken, and in the next phase of the battle, the “decisive attack” will be made against the imperialists (read foreigners). By drawing a “clear line” between “religious belief and imperialist conspiracies,” the Propaganda Department hoped to divide and conquer the church. 51 The plan is clear. The police would fi rst surgically clean out the foreigners, then the Chinese Catholics— those “fooled” by the imperialists—would quickly fall in line and join the CCP’s revolutionary struggle. Yet, “[f]or the complete victory of the struggle the key,” would be “to do good propaganda and education work.”52 The points of this work follow: 1. Fully reveal the imperialists’ criminal activities of using religion to carry out aggressive activities. The imperialists hidden in China’s church always linked up with foreign reactionaries. 2. Repeatedly explain that the people’s government continually insists on protecting religious freedom, but the government must punish those who use religion to plan destruction and hurt the national and people’s security according to the Common Program, article 7. 3. Call for the mass of believers and religious personnel to carry forward the patriotic spirit and actively participate in this struggle, and also call for all social classes and people to actively support and assist the anti-imperialist struggle within the Catholic Church.53 The strategy is clear: foreign missionaries are by definition imperialist and would be expelled; the government would safeguard religious “belief” on its own terms; and the believers—now made compliant tools of the state—would be mobilized for the destruction of their own church. The document then gives a list of evidence to be used in the media campaign. It rehashes Terwagne’s offenses: the insulting cartoons, the encrypted codes, and the messages sent abroad. It also repeats the litany of crimes committed by George Germain. The imperialists within the church are linked, by defi nition, with the worst enemies of the Chinese people: the Americans, the Japanese, and Chiang Kai-shek. The documents then mention the crimes of two new targets: Charles McCarthy, 122

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the superior of the Jesuit seminary; and Fernand Lacretelle, the Jesuit mission superior. They are accused of hiding radio receivers and naval transmission equipment, using the church to obtain intelligence, spreading rumors, destroying the land-reform movement, and seducing the young to train abroad. The plan pinpointed the targets. Missionary priests were located at a handful of locations throughout Shanghai, mainly parishes, seminaries, and even mission procurations. The two most important targets were simply the two places that housed the largest concentrations of foreign priests still remaining in China: Christ the King Parish with its five foreign priests, all of them American; and the Xujiahui Jesuit residences with about twenty remaining foreign priests. The fi rst arrests had already been made, the intelligence had been gathered, and the propaganda had been readied. Now was the time for action.

Clash at Christ the King Lefeuvre gives us the following account.54 On the night of June 15, 1953, students were performing in Christ the King’s main auditorium. At about 9:30 p.m. a student went out to see why a dog was barking on the church lawn. He saw soldiers scaling the church walls. They then encircled the gardens. At 9:45 p.m. a large crowd of students exited from the church hall and crossed through the gate to the street. Some of them sensed danger and went home. The police went about their work. They emerged from two vans already parked along the street. Then they proceeded to take photographs and seal up the church grounds. Early in the morning, the regulars for the 6:30 a.m. daily Mass began arriving. They quickly found that the main gate to the church compound had been locked. They hammered away at the main gate. Finally, the police cracked open the gate and discouraged them from entering. The police notified them that the place was “a center of espionage and the home of imperialists and counterrevolutionaries.”55 The Catholics, in turn, responded, “This is a church. The church is the property of the Christians. The people’s police cannot prevent the people from entering ‘their’ church.”56 The crowd swelled. Some of the Catholic Youth began to force their way into the courtyard. Finally, the police released the gate. The students had gained complete control of the front courtyard and the church itself. 123

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The police withdrew to a second line of defense in front of the church rectory. Given the large number of police officers and PLA soldiers, this second line held fi rm. The rectory and the park behind it were now strictly off limits. The Catholics screamed at the police about their religious rights under Chinese law. “You cannot silence the people!” they yelled.57 A standoff ensued. Only later would Catholics learn that, during the night, three of the American priests, Thomas Phillips, John Houle, and John Clifford, had been taken to prison. Joseph Gatz and John Baptist Palm, on the other hand, remained in the rectory under house arrest, during which time the “guard watched them day and night and they had to keep perpetual silence and were not allowed to see anybody or to say Mass. . . . [T]he guards searched Christ the King rectory many times, tapping and searching walls and floors and even used a mine-detector on the grounds.”58 In addition, the pastor, Francis X. Zhu Shude, was arrested, which only left the assistant pastor, Vincent Zhu Hongsheng, free to minister to his parishioners. The night before, Vincent Zhu had refused to sign a document that would have incriminated him and the other Catholics. The police kept him under continual surveillance. They needed him there, for if the parishioners demanded a priest, they had at least one available to minister to them.59 At fi rst, the police refused to let Vincent Zhu celebrate Mass. In turn, the Catholics put pressure on the police. “[P]aying no attention to the plainclothes policemen on duty,” they “continued to shout and plead and refused to leave until he was fi nally allowed to go to the church.”60 The police desisted. They were all too aware that the shouting could easily spiral into a popular protest. Zhu was allowed to go downstairs and celebrate Mass, guarded by two police officers. Immediately, the Catholics knelt and Zhu blessed them. The students took control, remembering what Vincent Zhu and the other priests had told them repeatedly over the past years: do not listen to us if we ever renounce the church. Had he—under pressure—now renounced the church? The students wanted to know. Was he now still a priest or was he a “reformist”?61 Zhu reassured them, and the students responded, “Then, you can enter our church.”62 Zhu celebrated Mass without incident. Afterward, the police escorted Zhu back to the rectory. The Catholic Youth occupied the courtyard and tried to bring food to the detained priests. By midday, there were more than two hundred Catholics present, their numbers mounting by the 124

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hour.63 Would the students take over the property? The police called in reinforcements. Several dozen vehicles soon arrived. It was a test of wills. Some students became more assertive, and the police, for their part, tried to disperse them. The Catholic Youth knew that if they did not keep calm, a riot could break out. They were also afraid that the CCP would send in agents provocateurs to create a civil disturbance. The regime would then have the perfect excuse to make large-scale arrests. To avert such a disaster, the students closed the gates and controlled access to the church property.64 At 2:00 p.m. the youth prayed the Stations of the Cross. They demanded that the priests be freed. Finally, they reached a compromise with the police. Vincent Zhu was again allowed to leave his quarters. Again, two guards fl anked him. The students fell to their knees; some were in tears. The priest advised them to return home. The students protested vigorously. A student questioned Zhu on the treatment he was receiving in the rectory. He deflected their question and said, “Be calm, and pray, pray. The church, above all, needs your prayers.”65 Zhu told the students that if they remained calm and only came for morning Mass and evening benediction, then they would be permitted to worship. The drama continued. After 5:00 p.m., hundreds more Catholics arrived from work to join the students. Within a few hours, there were about two thousand people in the courtyard and church. Suddenly the crowd parted and an eighty-year-old woman walked through. She knelt before Vincent Zhu and kissed his hands. It was his mother. They had the following dialogue: “Son, I raised you for the church.” “If I disown the church, you will have to disown me as your son.” “Yes, I will disown you.”66 The young Vincent Zhu entered the church with his mother. The crowd followed them. They recited the rosary and made the Stations of the Cross. During this time, Zhu remained at his mother’s side. Zhu then rose and gave the benediction. Then four young women pledged their fidelity to Christ and called upon all Catholics, each in their own parishes, to make a special novena for the upcoming Feast of the Sacred Heart. After benediction, everyone rose and sang the resounding anthem of the Catholic Youth. The recently composed song had fast become the favorite of the Catholic Youth. It had an eerie similarity with the revolutionary songs of the era. The lyrics were stirring: 125

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Rise up! Rise up, “Catholic Youth!” Hand in hand, we run forward. Rise up! Rise up, “Catholic Youth!” Hand in hand, we bravely run straight ahead. ............................................................ The “Catholic Youth” are Christ’s sons and daughters. The “Catholic Youth” are Christ’s little soldiers. Strive! Strive! Strive for true peace. The banner of peace can only go forward in love. Rise up! Rise up, “Catholic Youth!” Hand in hand, we run forward. Rise up! Rise up, “Catholic Youth!” Hand in hand, we bravely run straight ahead. Rise up! Rise up, “Catholic Youth!”67 The police then tried to escort Vincent Zhu back to his room. Some students intervened, and the situation again became tense. They did not want to let go of their priest. To defuse the situation, the police allowed Zhu’s mother to accompany her son back to his room. The crowds then returned home. By the morning of June 17, many parishioners had joined the students. The crowds grew so large that those attending morning Mass had to fi nd room outside on the church grounds. After morning Mass, Zhu insisted that the students return to school. The students wanted to remain the whole day as they had done the day before. They continued to call for the release of the priests. Vincent Zhu convinced “them that their insistence was in vain, and could even be damaging to the incarcerated against whom it was so easy to exercise reprisals.”68 The Catholics left and decided to return for vespers and benediction at 5:30 p.m.69 Thus, “the students of Christ the King did not resume their prolonged occupation of the church courtyard; rather, morning and evening, they gathered for liturgical celebrations and deeply moving common prayer.”70 Catholic feeling ran high. A letter from a Shanghai Catholic, written in the heat of the moment on June 17 at 6:00 p.m., stated the following: The military and the police watched us; the public watched us; but we were not afraid. We would rather suffer death than live to see our clergy mistreated. . . . The faithful have offered everything to our Lady of Zosé [Sheshan]. We all have the same conviction, that 126

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our heads may fall and our blood may be shed, but the Church will not become “The Reformed Church”, that our religious superiors cannot be falsely accused and the Pope cannot be cut off from us.71 After benediction, the situation remained tense. Some students insisted on making the Stations of the Cross. Reenacting Jesus’s death at the hands of the Roman authorities was not something that would endear the Catholic Youth to the regime. The historical parallels were too obvious. It was an awkward moment for Father Vincent Zhu as well. Then, as if on cue, and adding to the combustible mix, another detachment of machine-gun bearing soldiers arrived on the scene. “We come to arrest the spies,” they declared.72 Ten students then advanced toward the head of the detachment, closed the gate, and discussed the illegal detention of “the people” in a public place. The debate raged on. The three or four hundred others quietly waited in the courtyard and prayed the rosary on their knees. Onlookers gathered. The growing crowd worried the police officers. They opened the two doors of the gate and were hemmed in along the street. “Leave!” the officers yelled.73 Yet for five long minutes, the Catholics continued to pray the rosary. Once they fi nished, they sang hymns and shouted slogans. Then they surged through the opened gate into the streets chanting, “Long live Christ. Long live Christ.”74 The crowd dispersed quickly and the danger passed. Both sides had backed down, and by the morning of June 18, the number of soldiers stationed at Christ the King had greatly diminished. They continued their rounds, but they were polite enough and did not intervene in religious services. The situation at Christ the King over those three days had been tense, but violence had been averted. It was a testament as much to Catholic prudence as to police restraint. A potential massacre had been avoided. The police could not have expected the extent of Catholic resistance at Christ the King, but—despite the high cost—they had achieved their goals. The American “imperialists” had been arrested, and at least two of them—Clifford and Phillips—were taken to Lujiawan detention center, only six blocks away but on “another planet” from Christ the King.75 Although housed in the same facility, the two American Jesuits would not see each other again for three years.76 Clifford remembers that moment as the start of his brainwashing: “This process began for me on the night of June 15, 1953, when I was swept into jail and lost my membership in the human race.”77 127

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Clash at St. Ignatius Church Christ the King was one major target; Xujiahui was another. Although Christ the King had only recently become a major center for the Catholic Youth, the Xujiahui neighborhood had long been “Christian territory.”78 In fact, the area was the ancestral home of Paul Xu Guangqi, Grand Secretary to the Ming emperor and Matteo Ricci’s most famous convert. Further, many of its ten thousand Catholics traced their lineage back to Xu himself or one of the other “old Catholic” families. St. Ignatius, the neighborhood parish church, was one of the largest and most dynamic churches in Asia. The yearly parish statistics ending in June 1952 were indeed impressive: 468,000 communions and 130,000 confessions.79 One priest proudly boasted, “I doubt if anywhere on the globe the sacramental life of a parish is better developed; and you know the spontaneity and fervor of these good people.”80 Other missionaries were also impressed. Lefeuvre notes that the “Communists feared the reaction of the Zikawei [Xujiahui] Catholics, who, generally poor, were independent-minded and ready to sacrifice everything.”81 Thus, if the police were going to make their move against Xujiahui, they had best proceed cautiously and with overwhelming strength. They were—at all costs—to avoid a possible uprising. Yet the PSB had to target Xujiahui, for the various residences there housed the largest concentration of male religious personnel left in China: about twenty foreign priests, twenty-two Chinese priests, and fifteen Chinese brothers. It was also home to Fernand Lacretelle, the Jesuit mission superior and the highest-ranking Jesuit in Shanghai Lefeuvre gives the following account.82 On the night of June 15, the same night as the attack on Christ the King, several hundred police and soldiers struck with lightning speed and surrounded St. Ignatius. They sealed off the property and suspended traffic. The seminarian’s building was completely taken over, and all the priests were moved to the main residence, where they were isolated in separate rooms. The police also made their most important arrest of the evening. At 11:00 p.m.—with pistols drawn—they went to the room of Fernand Lacretelle. Lacretelle told them, “You can put away those guns. I am a priest, not a criminal and so promise you to make no attempt to escape.”83 The next morning, the early crowd arrived for Mass—much as they were doing at the same time at Christ the King. The people soon found that the majority of the priests did not come to say Mass. The police probably did not expect the Catholics to respond so quickly. (Could they 128

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have been unaware that some of the devout attended Mass early in the morning every day?) Some of the Catholics gathered in front of the Jesuit residence, which was guarded by detachments of machine-gun wielding soldiers. Someone in the crowd shouted, “You say that you protect the church, and you come to cut it down under our eyes!”84 Elderly women arrived with dishes for the Jesuits. They were pushed aside. The Catholics organized themselves for a long protest. They opposed the armed occupation of their sacred ground with their own spiritual weapons: they prayed the rosary and made the Stations of the Cross. From time to time, someone—quoting from the passion accounts in the gospels—exclaimed, “God! Forgive them, they know not what they do!”85 They also sang songs and shouted slogans such as “Long live our great pope,” “The love of Christ triumphs!” and “Glorious Fathers, we support you!”86 The police entered the living quarters of Francis X. Cai Shifang, pastor of St. Ignatius Parish and Catholic Shanghai’s famed orator, and began a lengthy discussion. Flanked by two guards, Cai went outside and tried to convince the crowd to return home. One Catholic, addressing himself to Cai and the guards surrounding him, said ironically, “Today, they still call you ‘Father’ because they need to use your words. But tomorrow they will treat you like a ‘running dog’ of the foreigners.”87 The crowd remained the whole night of June 16, praying and singing. They continually made the Stations of the Cross in front of the Jesuit residence—where the priests were now held incommunicado—prisoners in their own home. Thousands of Catholics jammed the huge church and packed the square in front of the church. They shouted, “Long Live Msgr. Lacretelle! Long Live the Jesuits! Give us back our priests!”88 The demonstrations continued into the next morning. A poster— similar to one already being used at Christ the King, and outlining Catholic resolve to pray and make penance during the trying times—was prominently displayed. Several hundred people continued at their posts throughout the night. By the morning of June 18, the crowd still had not dispersed. The CCP then organized a counterdemonstration. The New Democratic Youth arrived on the scene and began to fight with the parishioners. Catholic and Communist “militants” squared off against each other. It was a highly explosive mix of ideological fervor, political intrigue, and weaponry. Now Father Cai intervened a second time. He thanked the assembled Catholics for their courage. They had proven their fidelity to both their priests and to the non-Christians in the city. He knew that if passions continued to escalate, the peaceful protest might degenerate into 129

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violence. They could continue their prayers, he told them, but it was best not to continue their demonstration. The faithful then dispersed. Lefeuvre mentions the strong impression left on the millions of nonChristian inhabitants of the city. “It was the only time since the beginning of the Communist regime that a popular protest of this size and duration, organized with the express intent of rejecting an action taken by the government, was able to unfold in public view.”89 On the night of June 15, the police also made raids at other places still housing foreign missionaries: the Vincentian, Maryknoll, and Franciscan procurations, as well as the apartment of the former Aurora University Jesuits. The propaganda had long been prepared, and there was never any doubt that the regime would be successful in the June 15 nighttime arrests. The next morning—with great certitude—the Shanghai News Daily made this report: With the active assistance of the people and after long detailed investigations, the Public Security Bureau of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government arrested on June 15 a number of imperialist secret agents who wore the cloak of religion. These included Charles Joseph McCarthy, American, Director of the Jesuit Seminary; Thomas Leonard Phillips, American, priest of Christ the King Church; Joseph Patrick McCormack, American, Principal Officer of the Office of Maryknoll Missions; Fernand Lacretelle, French, Superior of the Society of Jesus; Joseph Jean Deymier, French, General Inspector for the Far East Mission [Vincentian]; totaling 13 persons.90 It then gave a long list of crimes these “imperialist secret agents” had committed against the government, for they had long conducted criminal sabotage activities against the Chinese people under the cloak of [being] Catholic missionaries. Among these criminals, some were seasoned imperialist secret agents who had conducted espionage activities before the liberation and maintained contact with imperialist espionage organizations after the liberation, continuing various conspiracies and sabotage. Some were in conspiracy with remnants of secret agents in the service of American imperialists and the Chiang Kai-shek gang, helping the latter to perpetuate espionage activities. Some of them had a history of long collaboration with Japanese bandits, 130

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Chinese traitors and the Chiang Kai-shek gang, oppressing the Chinese people, and unrepentant after the liberation they continued various activities against the people. These criminals were confi rmed in their hatred of, and opposition to, the Chinese people and their revolutionary cause. They sabotaged the Chinese People’s great holy “Resist America Aid Korea Movement;” they abused the righteous action of the Chinese People’s Volunteers as “aggressive conduct” after the style of the imperialists. They sabotaged our country’s national defense by preventing young people from joining the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and training schools for military cadres. They sabotaged the great land reform movement. Having recourse to all sorts of unscrupulous methods, they searched for water depths, weather, harbor and coastal information, and other military and political intelligence for imperialist espionage and intelligence organizations. They viciously seduced young Catholics whom they secretly sent abroad to foreign imperialist organizations to receive training. Shamelessly they abused and slandered the Chinese people and the People’s Government. They also manufactured various war rumors as a threat to the Chinese people. The exposure and arrest of this batch of imperialist spies show that in the face of the powerful strength of the Chinese people, any imperialist conspiracy for sabotage is doomed to failure. Presently the Public Security Bureau of the Shanghai Municipal Government is interrogating the various criminals in detail.91 A conspiracy had been discovered. Yet the article—long as it was— left out some crucial details. It did not give a complete list of those arrested. If it did so, it would have to mention that one of the “imperialist secret agents” arrested was actually a Chinese Jesuit: Francis X. Zhu Shude. Shanghai Catholics speculated that he was being enticed to join the independent church. For this reason alone, the press did not yet want to label him as a “running dog” of the imperialists. They might have use of him later. Further, the article made no mention of the large number of Chinese and foreign priests being held under house arrest and undergoing interrogation in their own homes. The propaganda blitz continued. By June 18, the Bureau of Culture and Education sponsored an exhibition that displayed some of the material evidence in order to prove the church’s purported imperialism. Mass accusation rallies followed in factories, hospitals, and schools. 131

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On June 25, Mayor Chen Yi presided over a large gathering of his consultative committee.92 In one of his rare direct interventions in religious matters, he said, “To oppose imperialism and to be patriotic is the sacred duty of everyone. The clergy and laymen of the Catholic Church, Catholics and non-Catholics, should alike unite under the leadership of the People’s Government and join this anti-Imperialist patriotic movement actively.” There was, he insisted, an important difference between “lawful protection of the freedom of religion” and suppression of the imperialists “who carried out sabotage through the channel of religion.”93 The committee adopted a resolution that “[a]lthough a serious blow has been dealt to the Imperialist conspiracy of carrying out sabotage through the Catholic Church, yet not all Imperialists and counter-revolutionaries hiding in the Catholic Church have been cleaned out.”94 In other words, Catholics were given an ultimatum: denounce the “imperialists” or be arrested as counterrevolutionaries.95 By now the police had arrested, or placed under house arrest, the majority of foreign priests in Shanghai. The arrests on June 15 had been swift and successful. Yet they failed in the ultimate goal of dividing the church. The China Missionary Bulletin speculated that the party “evidently thought that by removing the foreign priests and putting them in jail or under house arrest it would be easier to bring the Chinese priests into line with the Independent Church.”96 But despite the arrests of the foreign clergy, the Chinese priests were not intimidated. The church remained united. The CCP would now have to abandon pretense and arrest prominent Chinese priests—the “running dogs” of the imperialists—as well. The stage was set for the next strike.

Further Arrests and Expulsions Beginning on the night of July 6 and continuing over the new few days, the PSB struck repeatedly and with surgical precision. They arrested leading Chinese priests throughout the city.97 Some were prominent Jesuits who had done double duty as members of the preaching band and directors of the catechism groups: Louis Wang Rensheng, pastor of St. Peter’s Church; Francis X. Cai Shifang, pastor of St. Ignatius Church; and Gabriel Chen Tianxiang, secretary to the provincial. The intrepid leaders of the preaching band and spiritual directors of the youth were being diminished by the hour. 132

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The PSB also arrested diocesan priests, especially at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral and St. Joseph’s in Yangjingbang.98 These parishes were two of the most crucial non-Jesuit parishes in the city. The police arrived at the latter church at 9.30 p.m. to arrest Bishop Kung’s procurator, Nepocumene Fu Hezhou. Again, Catholic resistance was strong. Even though the police acted quickly, in the meantime such a large crowd had gathered around the church that the police car had difficulty getting out. Even so, other police remained on the grounds of the church until early morning. They searched the safe and took some documents and a small printing machine. In the early July roundups, the police questioned further priests as well and arrested some leaders of the Catholic Youth. It was probably that same night that the police also tried to arrest George Beauregard, a French-Canadian Jesuit.99 He was one of the last missionaries working in any of Shanghai’s parishes. He had long known that the parish was infiltrated by the CCP if only because it was where Bishop Kung lived and had an office. Beauregard had already seen George Germain arrested. On this night at about 10:30 p.m., he saw three cars and two jeeps arrive at the residence. Thirty soldiers, both men and women, approached the door. Soon they were going door to door to ask for each priest’s identification papers. Beauregard was ordered to his room, and a policeman was assigned to make sure he did not leave. While in his room, Beauregard put his desk in front of his door and carefully climbed up to the transom above the door. It was from that vantage point that he saw two soldiers working on the telephones. A few days later, he learned from one of his parishioners with contacts in the telephone company that Bishop Kung’s phone was tapped. The police were also reading the bishop’s mail. In fact, Beauregard would later learn the extent to which the bishop’s residence, and the church as a whole, had been infiltrated. There was no language barrier as the police employed translators, Europeans among them, who were proficient in the major languages of the world. These expatriates would also spy on their respective communities and even work for the police from inside the prisons. Beauregard was arrested before the end of the month. He had many months ahead of him in prison to reflect on the events that had just transpired. The arrests were successful, but Catholic resolve remained fi rm. The CCP quickly recognized that mobilizing the whole population against the church was not breaking its resistance.100 In response, the cadres relaxed the press campaign and the accusation meetings. They then began to work overtime on the diocesan priests, forcibly bringing them 133

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to a meeting with Xu Jianguo, the chief of police. The priests were told to break ties with the imperialists who were oppressing them, or else suffer the consequences of opposing the government. Three days later Bishop Kung himself was taken to the mayor’s office, where he met with five high-ranking officials, including the director of the Bureau of Culture and Education.101 Kung told them that he did not oppose the government, but that he had to safeguard essential Catholic doctrine.102 For Kung, the integrity of the faith remained paramount. In the succeeding weeks, diocesan priests continued to be called in to police stations and exhorted to denounce the imperialists. Further, the government was trying to get priests to sign “vague formulas” about having worked with the imperialists.103 The idea behind the plan was to break down the priests’ resistance so they would join the “reformed” church. At the very least, the cadres hoped they could create divisions among the Catholic priests. Such pressure was already bearing fruit in the neighboring Archdiocese of Nanjing, where the vicar general of that city had already begun to form a schismatic church. In August, he convened a church council where priests were encouraged to sign a statement that effectively placed the church under the control of the state. Once the vicar general took this unilateral action, he had reached the point of no return with the Vatican. The Vatican then fi nally made public the news that—some time before—the vicar general had already been excommunicated.104 For the regime, a Catholic “schism” was a small price to pay for mastery over the church. Arrests of foreign missionaries continued throughout the summer and fall, including at the Divine Word, Augustinian, and Spanish Jesuit procurations, which were raided in short order. Chinese priests rushed to fill the leadership vacuum. But as each of them crossed the regime’s invisible line, they were arrested as well. The game of musical chairs might appear comical if it were not so serious. Some examples are in order. At Christ the King, Vincent Zhu Hongsheng continued his stirring preaching and was arrested on October 3, 1953. In turn, he was replaced by George Wong (Huang Huaquan). At St. Peter’s, there was a rapid succession of pastors. The French Jesuits Paul Faury and Octavius Brière were expelled in late July, and Michael Qian Shengguang took over as pastor. He refused to tone down his preaching and was arrested on September 13. He too had to be replaced. St. Ignatius Parish also had to fi nd a way to survive. The sixty-four-year-old Vincent Xu Zonghai, a descendant of Paul Xu Guangqi, had stepped down as pastor in 1950. At that point, Francis X. Cai Shifang was made pastor. When Cai was arrested in July 134

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1953, Vincent Xu became pastor again, but then—despite his advanced age—he was arrested on March 19, 1954.105 The priests under house arrest were also put under intense pressure. Loudspeakers were mounted outside their residences, and they were forced to attend indoctrination sessions. Such pressure had tragic consequences. Consider the case of the young Jesuit Anthony Wang Zhe, from the Xianxian mission in the north and one of the first native Chinese theologians on the seminary faculty. On one day alone, he was interrogated for twenty consecutive hours. (This was not the record to date, for one priest reported being interrogated for ninety-two consecutive hours.)106 Wang was pressured to sign incriminating documents. A scrupulous man—it was said—and terrified of betraying fellow Catholics under duress, he became unstable. George Wong, who lived next door, said that on the last day of interrogation, September 17, Wang jumped from his third-floor room.107 He preferred suicide to betrayal. Later, Bishop Kung said the requiem Mass and presided at the burial. A massive crowd gathered. Given the poisoned atmosphere of the time, many Shanghai Catholics—who noticed the wounds on his head and left side—doubted it was a suicide. It was, they insisted, torture. Yet this was precisely the kind of incident the CCP was trying to avoid. It did not want new Catholic martyrs. Next came the mass expulsions. The stream of missionaries expelled from Shanghai became a torrent. Starting in mid-July, just a month after the major arrests of foreign clergy, missionaries began arriving in Hong Kong. Some were part of the June roundup; others had been arrested years before. Some came by train and others by boat; some had waited for days and others were given fifteen minutes before being expelled. The police even admitted that the missionaries were being expelled in small groups, so the expulsions would not appear to be what they were: an antiforeign move. Clearly, it was time to empty the prisons and expel those under house arrest. There was a method to the expulsions. Some missionaries were released immediately because they had not worked with such youth groups as the Legion of Mary or the Marian Sodalities. Other missionaries were released because they could not yield important intelligence or they did not come from an “enemy” nation. The number of those expelled only increased after the Geneva Convention was signed. Some priests expelled in mid-July might have held important positions, but they were not deemed political threats. Some of them taught at schools for expatriates and probably did not speak Chinese well or at all. They 135

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were simply superfluous in the “new China.” For others, China was “home.” The human profile was fascinating. At least one of the “missionaries” had been born in China, and some had already lived longer in China than in their nations of origin. For these longtime missionaries especially, it must have hurt deeply to hear the simple logic of their expulsion. Joseph Diniz, a Portuguese Jesuit born in Shanghai, was simply told, “We don’t want you here.”108 The police even expelled high-profile figures like Yves Henry, the former vicar capitular of Shanghai. By 1954, the CCP even released some of the priests who had worked for the Catholic Central Bureau and had led the Legion of Mary, those arrested in the fall of 1951: Legrand, McGrath, Prévost, and Quint. Upon arriving in Hong Kong, McGrath was greeted by fellow Legionaries who “fought to shake his hand.”109 In May 1954, the fiery Hungarian Havas was fi nally brought before a government tribunal. After twenty months in prison, and now standing before the judge, he would not sign the accusations. He had not signed them in prison and he would not sign them now. The judge became irritated and put a gun to the priest’s chest.110 Still Havas would not sign. He denied the police their one last satisfaction. Yet he was expelled anyway. Even Fernand Lacretelle, the mission superior, was released on July 2, 1954, a little over a year after his arrest.111 In the meantime, the church was finally devolving the highest positions of leadership to the Chinese. Indeed, the church had struggled with this issue for years. One talented young Chinese Jesuit now had to carry more than his share of the burden. Even before he was arrested, Lacretelle had named Louis Jin Luxian for multiple responsibilities. Before long, Jin was deputy superior of the Jesuits in China, acting superior of Jesuits in Shanghai, acting pastoral superintendent of the Diocese of Haizhou, and superior of the Shanghai Xujiahui major seminary. When he was first given these tasks, Jin went to the chapel, where he “prayed, not hindering tears from falling, without [having] the slightest mettle of a hero.”112 Heroism was for others; Jin had to deal with his crushing responsibilities. In his new roles, Louis Jin tried to address some long-standing grievances in the community. He was aware that some diocesan priests were not happy with the Jesuits. Some also thought that Bishop Kung, who was then living at the Jesuit parish of St. Joseph’s in Yangjingbang, still relied too heavily on the Jesuits. In response, Jin moved Jesuits out of that parish and rarely went to visit. He was also willing to cede more properties to the diocese.113 136

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Seizing the Initiative The public security officers were thorough. At Christ the King and Xujiahui, they had expelled many priests, thoroughly interrogated and pressured those under house arrest, and completely searched and photographed the grounds. The most incriminating evidence they uncovered was an old grenade they found at the bottom of a well.114 The grenade, of course, could have come from any one of the conflicts that had plagued Shanghai over the past thirty years. Small-scale arrests of priests and lay Catholics continued, especially in April 1954.115 By July 1954, the expulsions had slowed down. In late September and early October, the detachments of police and soldiers fi nally moved out of Christ the King and Xujiahui. They had done their job; the two sites were “liberated.”116 However, it seems that none of the priests had signed any incriminating statements under duress. Despite the heavy costs, Shanghai Catholics tried—once again—to seize the initiative. The massive arrests, expulsions, and sequestrations had left them increasingly isolated and exposed. More responsibility fell on the shoulders of Bishop Kung. And Kung himself was ever more isolated. Even so, Kung became one of the few remaining bishops left in China who could speak out against CCP attacks on the church. One such attack was currently taking place in Beijing. Even before the July lull, Kung sent a message via Hong Kong to Rome. He told them that during the Marian year of 1954, Monsignor Li, the vicar general of Beijing, wanted to raise the Nantang church to the rank of a basilica.117 Kung alerted Rome through his contact, George Germain, that this was a “reform parish” and that the priest in charge was “extremely suspect.” Any “goodwill” from the Holy See would be “a disastrous influence for [C]atholic resistance and for the Chinese clergy who in the great majority refuse all compromise with the Communist government.”118 Kung was standing firm. Kung also knew that Shanghai Catholics had to stand on their own feet. His last, best hope was the Xujiahui seminaries, for local priests were crucial for the future. These seminaries were the biggest functioning Catholic seminaries in China and, by most accounts, the last remaining ones. There were more than three hundred seminarians altogether—hailing from all over China—at the three Shanghai seminaries: the Probatorium, the minor seminary, and the major seminary. In early 1954, there were fourteen priests on staff, all Jesuits, including four foreign Jesuits. Louis Jin Luxian was the major superior of the seminary. 137

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In order to assure the fidelity of the next generation of church leaders, Bishop Kung and Father Jin led their priests and seminarians to the Sheshan basilica. In front of the high altar, they all took an oath to Our Lady of Sheshan not to betray the church. The vow ended “Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat et cum Christo, mater nostra vincit, mater nostra regnat, mater nostra imperat” (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands, and with Christ, Mary conquers, Mary reigns, Mary commands).119 One account holds that the consecration was made on October 17, 1953.120 A former seminarian says he made his vow in May 1954. Although Shanghai Catholics were increasingly isolated, they were not forgotten, for during this time Pope Pius XII wrote a second letter to China. “Ad Sinarum Gentem” (To the people of China) was signed in Rome on October 7, but was not made public until December 22, once Rome was assured that the document had been disseminated to the bishops of China.121 The letter noted that although many Catholics in China had remained firm, some had adhered to “dangerous movements.” While “persecutors of the Christians falsely accuse them of not loving their country,” the pope countered that “Chinese Catholics are second to no one in their ardent love and ready loyalty to their most noble fatherland.”122 The letter added that the church and all of its bishops must “be completely subject to the Supreme Pontiff, [the] Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, and be strictly united with him in regard to religious faith and morals.”123 The document also directly addressed the Three-Self Movement: The promoters of such movements with the greatest cunning seek to deceive the simple or the timid, or to draw them away from the right path. For this purpose they falsely affi rm that the only true patriots are those who adhere to the church thought up by them, that is, to that which has the “Three Autonomies” [Three-Self]. But in reality they seek, in a word, to establish fi nally among you a “national” church, which no longer could be Catholic because it would be the negation of that universality or rather “catholicity” by which the society truly founded by Jesus Christ is above all nations and embraces them one and all.124 At least fi fty of the Shanghai diocesan clergy along with Bishop Kung were able to read and reflect on the pope’s letter, coming as it did in time for their annual retreat at the end of 1954.125 During this period, Bishop Kung himself continued to ensure the church’s survival. He made efforts to name a successor should he be 138

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arrested—and that was increasingly probable. Such a move was imperative, for according to church law, only a bishop could consecrate future priests. The problem was that for a bishop to be consecrated, fully three bishops needed to be present as co-consecrators. Fortunately, this was possible in Shanghai because three bishops were often present: Kung, James E. Walsh, and the elderly Simon Zhu Kaimin of Haimen, who would often spend time in his native city. Thus, consecrating another bishop in Shanghai was possible, and contingency plans were put in place. To this end, in February, in the presence of a picture of Our Lady of China and with several witnesses present, Kung named three possible successors should he be imprisoned. Louis Jin Luxian adds more details to the contested search for Kung’s possible successor.126 He says that Kung originally made a secret directive to name two diocesan priests as possible successors. Later, Kung had second thoughts. One of the priests was too fearful and the other was too unyielding. Therefore, Kung had Jesus Martinez-Balirach, a Spanish Jesuit, send a letter to Rome with two further candidates. None of the four priests knew they were on the lists. When this information is combined with the mix of other directives, it gives rise to an ever-more confusing situation. There was a succession crisis in the making. In addition, church records reveal there was also a developing plan to consecrate a bishop who was “completely clandestine.”127 This clandestine bishop would apparently remain secret his entire life. He would ensure the survival of the church by ordaining worthy men to the priesthood. However, there are important canonical problems with a clandestine bishop, for the faithful have a right to know who their bishop is. The church should function clandestinely only under the greatest pressure. This much was in accordance with canon law: the bishop is meant to shepherd his diocese, and not even arrest should frustrate the governance of a legitimate bishop. He would simply take care of his flock from behind bars. Yet despite all the plans, there is no evidence that such a clandestine bishop—or even a publicly recognized bishop—was ever named for Shanghai. Kung remained the sole shepherd of the flock. A possible successor was never named, but these types of deliberations to ensure the survival of the church were top secret. At times, they were even coded. For example, there is a text in one of the archives that is embedded in a lengthy Latin treatise. It is written in Basque, a language known to a minority of the Spanish Jesuits but indecipherable to the uninitiated. The church—it would seem—had its own equivalent to the Navajo code-talkers. 139

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During this uncertain time, the Shanghai CCP was also trying to seize the initiative, something it had lost—in mid-1954—after the last expulsions. The regime proceeded on several fronts. In February 1955, the CCP expelled some of the last remaining foreign missionaries in Shanghai, some of whom were teaching at the seminary. In fact, by the middle of 1955, there were few free missionaries left in Shanghai. They included one Spanish Jesuit; three Belgian priests; two Jesuit brothers; five cloistered Carmelite sisters; one Spanish Augustinian; and Bishop Walsh, who continued his lonely existence at the CCB. The missionaries listed above were hardly free in any real sense. Some were still under house arrest, and others were shadowed whenever they left their residences. Further, seven priests, all of them Americans, were in jail. Shanghai had indeed been purged of imperialist (read foreign) influence; the remaining foreign missionaries could hardly have posed a threat. Nevertheless, CCP methods became even more severe. The party was building a huge system of informers throughout the nation. In time, these informers penetrated Catholic institutions, and soon cooks, secretaries, and janitorial staff could not be trusted. These workers even knew which seminarians had been listening to “counterrevolutionary” radio broadcasts from Taiwan, and which were paying visits to the priests. There were other moves as well, and by August 1954, the CCP began a renewed campaign against the Legion of Mary, when additional youth were arrested.128 The regime was making even bolder moves on the national level. State consolidation proceeded apace. The Constitution was formally ratified in September 1954, and, as such, it replaced the Common Program. Article 88 of the Constitution stated that China’s citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief,” that is, as defined by the state.129 By way of preparation, in July and August there were indoctrination sessions in Shanghai about the new Constitution.130 Other national moves had a direct bearing on religious affairs. By June 1954, the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) was strengthened. Previously the RAB was a branch of the Bureau of Culture and Education, a state of affairs that roughly dated back to its creation on January 12, 1951.131 Now the RAB was a cabinet-level bureau under the State Council, headed by He Chengxiang, who had formerly worked under Li Weihan at the UFWD. The government had apparently realized that it needed a full-fledged bureau with religious specialists to more effectively control religious groups. The national campaigns also involved some serious purges. By mid1954, there had already been a nationwide campaign against corrupt 140

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cadres. By the end of the year, a purge of the party began, the fi rst such major purge of the CCP since “liberation.” On the national level, three key party members were attacked: Gao Gang, party chief of the northeast; Hu Feng, a major cultural figure; and Rao Shushi, fi rst party secretary of East China. Of these national figures, it was Rao’s ouster that sent the biggest shock waves through Shanghai. Why was Rao purged? For the longest time, few knew. But relying on reports made after 1979, there seems to have been tensions between Rao Shushi and Chen Yi that went back to the Rectification campaign of 1943–1944 when Rao smeared Chen Yi.132 By 1949, Rao was fi rst party secretary of East China, and Chen Yi was third party secretary of same region, as well as mayor of Shanghai. Yet the antipathy remained. It seems quite likely that Mayor Chen Yi engineered the downfall of his former nemesis. Other leading cadres in Shanghai also fell victim to the purges. Shanghai’s vice mayor Pan Hannian was also purged. At the yearly session of the People’s Congress in April 1955, Pan’s old friend Chen Yi announced that Pan had been arrested for crimes purportedly committed in 1943.133 Neither Pan’s high rank nor his close friendship with Mayor Chen Yi could save him.134 His purge is still shrouded in mystery, and to this day it is not clear who caused his demise. He was blamed for “rightist passivity,” leniency toward enemies of the state. The directors of the Shanghai PSB also suffered. Xu Jianguo, after his 1953 campaign against the church had failed, lost much power.135 By July 1955, it was reported that his predecessor, Yang Fan—director of Shanghai PSB and architect of the early 1951 Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement—had himself been arrested.136 He was responsible for the failed frontal assault on the Legion of Mary. Charged with inadequately prosecuting opponents of the government, he was later executed. The revolution was beginning to consume its own. In April 1955, there was a new Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement. Thus, there were ominous signs that 1955 was going to become a repeat of 1951. Important party members had not been spared. A stream of letters in the press denounced Bishop Kung. Further, the CCP feared that Kung was becoming a symbol of resistance, not only for Catholics, but also for other Chinese who were growing discontent with the regime. The CCP was also worried because its second assault on the church had mixed results. Surely, the arrests and expulsions had proceeded like clockwork. Even so, another goal of the attack on the church was to 141

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“launch a universal anti-imperialist patriotic movement among Catholic believers, and change the situation in which imperialism manipulates the Catholic Church to do conspiratorial activities.”137 Only in this way would the CCP be able to mobilize Catholics to serve the interests of the party. But launching the “progressive” movement among Catholics had largely failed. Despite the CCP’s best efforts in doing “good propaganda and education work,” many people remained unconvinced that the church was somehow guilty of conspiracy. Catholics were certainly “guilty” of defending their church and of resisting some CCP religious policies. But there was not a shred of credible evidence that they were conspiring to overthrow the regime. Many saw the propaganda for what it was: a concatenation of trumped-up evidence, spurious charges, guilt by association, and endlessly repeated slogans. Party documents show that even some cadres remained unconvinced by both the evidence against the church and the threat posed by the church. The CCP now took aim at those very cadres and their “rightist passivity.” The regime now had the scapegoats it needed to blame for the lack of success against the Shanghai Catholic community. The March 1956 party document summarizes: After liberation, in 1951 and 1953 we organized two large-scale assaults against the imperialists in the Shanghai Catholic Church and we attacked, arrested, expelled, and squeezed out [jizou] most of the foreign clergy and sisters. But because of crimes committed by Rao Shushi and Pan Hannian, imperialist power and the counterrevolutionaries not only still controlled the Shanghai church but further stiffened their resistance against us. . . . In the autumn of 1955 under the correct direction of the Central Committee of the party and the Shanghai Municipal Committee, we cleared up the crimes committed by Rao Shushi and Pan Hannian and overcame the cadre’s rightist passivity. We used the good occasion of the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement [zhenfan] and began our full-scale attack against the reactionary power of the Shanghai Catholic Church. . . . 138 The Shanghai Catholic community had weathered the “large-scale assaults” of 1951 and 1953. But a new storm was gathering, the winds shifting direction. Catholic Shanghai was about to be hit with the force of a hurricane.

142

The Shen family at Mary’s grotto, 1917. Courtesy of Louis Shen, SJ.

Ignatius Kung Pinmei’s fi rst blessing as the newly consecrated bishop of Suzhou, October 7, 1949, St. Ignatius Church, Shanghai. Jesuit California Province Archives, Santa Clara, CA.

“More prizes for small fry.” Beda Chang (center left) and Vincent Zhu Hongsheng (at microphone) with students at St. Ignatius High School, April 1949. Jesuit California Province Archives, Santa Clara, CA.

Beda Chang (left) and Simon Zhu Kaimin (center), the Jesuit bishop of Haimen, enjoy an event with students. Anonymous private collection.

Archbishop Anthony Riberi (center, with clenched fists) and Bishop James Walsh (to his left) gather with key officers of the Catholic Central Bureau (CCB), Shanghai, September 1950. Those pictured most likely include: Aedan McGrath, James Motte, Matthew Chen Zhemin, John Tung (Dong) Shizhi, Francis Théry, Charles McCarthy, Francis Legrand, Joseph Vos, Gabriel Quint, Gustave Prévost, Joseph Shen Shixian, Hou Zhizheng, Alain de Terwaigne, and Kung Shengbo (Bishop Kung’s brother). Maryknoll Mission Archives, Maryknoll, NY.

The ordination class of 1951 with Bishop Kung, Fernand Lacretelle, and Charles McCarthy (from center to right). Jesuit California Province Archives, Santa Clara, CA.

Rescuing Legionaries from the pit and uniting them under the leadership of the party, 1951. Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily).

“We call on the government to ban the Legion of Mary.” Anti-Legion demonstration. Shanghai Municipal Archives.

George Germain about to be expelled as a “spy,” 1952. A news clipping most likely from Xinwen ribao (News Daily). Anonymous private collection.

Bishop Kung in procession, 1952. USF Ricci Institute, San Francisco, CA.

Bishop Kung at a speaking engagement with students, 1952. Two Catholic militants serve as bodyguards. Anonymous private collection.

The last known group photo of Bishop Kung with the staff and seminarians of the Xujiahui seminaries, 1954. Kung is pictured with Louis Jin Luxian (to his left) and Joseph Fan Zhongliang (two places to his right). Anonymous private collection.

“Hiding under the cloak of religion, the form of a counterrevolutionary appears.” A news clipping most likely from Xinwen ribao (News Daily). Anonymous private collection.

“Is this also called ‘religious activity’?” This political cartoon published on December 10, 1955, accompanies an article blasting the “Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique.” Pictured is a Catholic bishop preaching from the pulpit while secretly passing off an intelligence report to a hidden US agent. Renmin ribao (People’s Daily).

Trial of the “Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique” at the moment of sentencing, March 17, 1960. Author’s collection.

“Patriotic” church triumphant: “Bishop” Louis Zhang Jiashu (center right), about 1960. The effects of the Great Famine seem to be taking their toll. Il Tempo, Italy.

Pope John Paul II kisses the newly elevated Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pinmei, nearly twelve years after he had secretly named him a cardinal, 1991. Courtesy of Joseph Kung.

4 A S S AULT

I will strike the shepherd and the flock will scatter. Mark 14:27

In a beautiful Qing-era villa—located at the edge of Shanghai’s upscale Lilac Park in the old French Concession—the preparations began on August 12, 1955. A document written the next day on Shanghai Propaganda Department stationery responded to a request that came directly from the Shanghai Municipal Committee.1 Members of the Propaganda Department had been asked to form a “working group” to prosecute Bishop Kung. The document asked, in response, for an official name for the “working group” and permission to form an official stamp. The “working group” would draw upon the talents of well-trained cadres and coordinate its efforts with the PSB and the RAB. The “war plans” showed they were ready for a planned and systematic attack. Here are their fi rst deliberations: Based on the Municipal Committee’s instruction we have already preliminarily transferred 25 cadres from related departments to establish the office at Lilac Park [Dingxiang Gongyuan] on August 12. We basically assigned Shi Ximin as the head of this office, comrades Lu Boming, Chen Yiming, and Wang Xiaoyun are vice-directors. Under the office, we established five subsections: secretarial, propaganda, communications, material evidence, and investigation. We have Wang Xiaoyun as head of the secretarial and communications unit. Chen Yiming is in charge of propaganda. Chu Rong is in charge of material evidence. The investigation of the whole section belongs to the Municipal Public Security Bureau. The office officially began work yesterday. Now we are further investigating the enemy situation, arranging materials, making 143

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war plans, and researching six key districts: Xuhui, Luwan, Songshan, Huangpu, Penglai, and Hongkou. I will report further details about how to establish the local branches of our office and guide them in making detailed war plans. 2 We now have a rare look into the internal workings of the Shanghai CCP. CCP bureaus are often faceless entities to the outside world, yet here we have some faces to associate with the newly formed office or “working group.” Most of the key members of the “working group” are from the Shanghai Propaganda Department. One is Shi Ximin, author of the document and the head of the new office. The other is Chen Yiming, head of the Shanghai Propaganda Department, who would act as director of propaganda for the working group as well. Wang Xiaoyun, from the powerful Municipal Committee, was to head the secretarial and communications unit. A material evidence unit was also created. Thus, the document proves that the most powerful government and party offices were combining forces and that they were putting some of their most experienced cadres in the working group. This would be war.

Preparations The fi rst stages of the attack were preparatory. Party unity and discipline were to be maintained. Any discordant voices were to be silenced. The influences of Rao and Pan had already been cleared out. Between early August and September 8, the Municipal Committee did some internal house cleaning. Cadres that did not understand the dangers of the “Kung Pinmei clique” were criticized. They were “lacking confidence in mobilizing the masses against the Kung Pinmei clique,” they “mistakenly thought that we do not have enough evidence to attack the enemy,” and “they felt that if we arrested them [the Catholics], there would be some legal discrepancies [in our actions] and we would hurt the believers’ feelings” according to a “top-secret” CCP report written in 1956. 3 Obviously, for the above reasons, there was internal party opposition in moving against Kung Pinmei. The verdict: “These are all rightist opinions and thinking.”4 Purged of “rightist” errors, a unified party would now launch a “fullscale attack against the reactionary power of the Shanghai Catholic Church,” and the military drumbeat was now sounded.5 It was time to annihilate the enemy. The impressive report speaks for itself: 144

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We defined our battle policy and set the stage to annihilate the Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique. From the municipal to the district level, we established our united combat command and control center: the Religious Affairs Bureau. Step by step, we assembled about 1,000 cadres, and they were trained concerning religious policy and struggle strategy. Under the Religious Affairs Bureau we had six working groups: secretarial, propaganda, leadership, communication, “Catholic Youth,” etc. In absolute secrecy, they all carried out their intense preparations independently. Working on the materials, on the one hand, they investigated, researched, and estimated the enemy situation, they centralized and accumulated criminal evidence committed by the counterrevolutionaries, and they finished carrying out all the legal procedures concerning the repression and arrests. On the other hand, concerning the “Catholic Youth,” the leading Catholic elite [shangceng daibiaoxing renwu], clergy, and believers who could potentially cause disruption, we studied them case by case to discern their true intentions [paidui modi], to the bottom of their hearts. Concerning propaganda work, the propaganda cadres organized the special force which included the party newspaper and experienced leading comrades, and edited a great deal of propaganda to denounce the crimes of the enemy. We put special emphasis on the content revealing the believers’ own advantage, so that we could stimulate the anger of the masses. After going through all the preparatory work and lengthy deliberations and revision, we formulated our comprehensive combat plan. In deciding each stage and each plan, we fully absorbed the lessons of the past, and therefore were prepared to face the worst situation by making ample estimations and preparations, to prevent us from being caught unaware when the enemy organized their counterattack, one which might have forced us to take a passive position.6 Conscious that, in the past, the main resistance had come from the Catholic Youth, the regime would fi rst stage a preemptive strike to soften up the opposition. They would do this by fi rst attacking the perimeter of the church and then destroying the core. After the Catholic Youth had been isolated, they would be broken down one by one and set against each other. It was the tried-and-true tactic of “divide and destroy.” In conducting the preparatory stage, another important aspect is that beginning in early August we united our work with the 145

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Elimination of Counterrevolutionaries Movement [sufan] in the schools and the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement [zhenfan] in society. Concerning the Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique, we conducted our war by attacking his defensive perimeter [waiwei zuozhan]. First, we decimated the core leadership of the “Catholic Youth”—whom the enemy had previously used in the battles as the main force of their mass counter-attacks. They were the college and university students in the “Catholic Youth” organization and part of the main pillar of the reactionaries in society. With the same goal in mind, the different colleges began their intensive thought struggle against 250 of the “Catholic Youth.” We controlled their activities. We divided and broke down 240 of them, and we won over 40 of the core leaders, who, after rebelling within [the Catholic Youth movement], came to our side so that we could use them. [From them] we accumulated and enhanced our materials to destroy the Kung Pinmei clique. At the same time, because of the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement, the government arrested a group of counterrevolutionaries hidden in the Catholic Church and other counterrevolutionaries guilty of other social crimes, in order to clear barriers to launch the whole movement.7 The document yields some important information. First, when compared with the August 1955 document, which set up the “working group,” a new unit to deal specifically with the Catholic Youth is mentioned. Second, the document says there are six units, but it lists only five. Is this an oversight? Or is it because the investigations unit, mentioned in the earlier document, was now being handled by the Shanghai PSB and, as such, was shrouded in even greater secrecy? Third, the division of labor follows classic bureaucratic procedure: each unit works independently of the others, then reports its fi ndings to the central office for further coordination. Fourth, the document shows the party was investing a great deal of human and fi nancial resources in the current “war” with one thousand cadres having been specially trained and dedicated to the campaign. They were readying massive amounts of propaganda to be printed in the news. Naturally, compilations of these newspaper articles would be the key study items used in the upcoming indoctrination sessions. Fifth, the cadres, like any good students, had learned from their mistakes. They had even prepared for a worst-case scenario. They knew 146

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that, in the past, the counterattack had come from the well-trained Catholic Youth. The backbone of the Catholic Youth, they had learned, was comprised of 250 college and university students, a number that accords almost exactly with “Catholic” sources. Having fi rst studied these students on a “case-by-case” basis, the office then set about dividing and destroying them. If we are to believe the document, 240 of them had already been broken. In fact, forty had been won over to the government “camp.” During these crucial weeks, by isolating and “struggling against” key members of the Catholic Youth, the CCP had, through a preemptive strike, effectively softened up potential opposition. Sixth, we see that the local attack on the “Kung Pinmei clique” was to be held in conjunction with the current national Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement. With more than one thousand cadres assembled under the direction of the “working group,” and with the active support of the Shanghai PSB, the regime was able to assemble an accurate assessment of the “enemy.” And, indeed, there is at least one such dossier that attests to this fact.8 One document in the dossier, dated August 24, 1955, lists all the priests still active in both Shanghai and Suzhou, as well as in the surrounding countryside. It also lists their current job descriptions. An X marks the names of the Jesuit priests, perhaps the most worrisome to the regime. The dossier also includes several retreat lists. Apparently, there were three retreats for priests in late 1954 and early 1955. The dossier has information on the second and third of these, held at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in January and February 1955, respectively. Bishop Kung attended both of these retreats and led the second one. In addition, there is a list of nineteen Catholic Youth who also made a retreat at this time. They range in age from thirteen to twenty-one. Given the accuracy of all the lists and the late date—August 24 —for the comprehensive roster of priests, it would appear that the documents in the dossier could well serve as master lists for the upcoming arrests. The dossier gives us the only known extant material on these retreats. One can only imagine the documentary evidence still housed in the PSB Archives. In summary—by early September 1955—the preparatory work had been fi nished. “Rightist” cadres had been corrected, the “working group” organized, incriminating evidence gathered, propaganda readied, and the core members of the Catholic Youth neutralized. There was now little chance for key Catholics to “link up” and create a “large-scale mass mob rebellion.”9 Then, once these “barriers” had been cleared, the CCP was ready to launch the attack. “After all the preparatory work, on 147

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September 8 we unleashed our comprehensive struggle against the Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique,” the 1956 report boldly stated.10 On September 6, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai called Chen Yiming, the director of the Shanghai Propaganda Department—and a key member of the “working group”—to Beijing.11 Zhou asked Chen if he was ready, for the new nationwide campaign against the Catholic Church was about to begin in Shanghai. There had already been two “strike hard” campaigns against the Shanghai Catholic community. Both had ultimately ended in failure. The third would be different.

Arrest of Bishop Kung Arriving exhausted in Hong Kong on September 18, Luis Bolumburu, a Spanish Jesuit, brought the news to the outside world. A few days before his arrival, the Hong Kong Chinese newspapers had reported that Bishop Kung had been arrested along with four priests.12 Bolumburu’s report was even more startling. He explained what had happened at his own Sacred Heart Parish in Shanghai’s Hongkou section. On the night of September 8, the church premises were suddenly flooded with electric lights. About fifty police climbed over the walls and occupied the buildings. The seven resident priests were then escorted to the living room. Their superior, Louis Zhang Duanliu, about whom we shall learn more later, turned over the keys to the property. Some priests were immediately taken to prison, while others remained under house arrest. Incredibly enough, the next day, Bolumburu was allowed to say Mass at the nearby General Hospital for a small group of nuns. He was probably treated leniently because his Spanish nationality was viewed as nonthreatening. Even so, he was closely watched. While saying Mass there, Bolumburu encountered a seminarian who had just been hospitalized because he had become unstable—no doubt because of the late-night raids at his seminary just hours before. From him Bolumburu was able to piece together an account of what had happened. More than twenty priests (both Jesuit and diocesan), a handful of seminarians, several hundred Catholics, and Bishop Kung had all been arrested. Bolumburu’s account was accurate enough. In time, there would be more exact figures. The bishop had indeed been arrested along with seven diocesan priests, fourteen Chinese Jesuits, two Carmelite sisters, and some three hundred leading Chinese Catholics.13 It was the “largest 148

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group of religious leaders ever rounded up by the Chinese Communist regime.”14 The date turned out to be providential for some Catholics, for September 8 is the day the church celebrates the birthday of Mary, Mother of God. It was significant that many Shanghai Catholics had placed themselves under her care. Many would come to see September 8 as the key date of their years of resistance to the CCP’s religious policies, as well as the key date of their fidelity to the church. It was to become a defi ning moment for Shanghai’s church militant. Other accounts also attest to the simultaneous raids made throughout the city late on the night of September 8 and into the early morning of September 9. Hundreds, if not thousands, of police raided institutions from seminaries and churches to Catholic households. The force used was swift and overwhelming. Bishop Kung’s private secretary Shen Baoyi remembers that three armed policemen burst into his room at 11 p.m. They searched his quarters and confiscated many books and letters, placing them in large bags. Shen was then handcuffed and taken away.15 There was little opportunity to resist. Teenagers roused from bed could do little to face down three or four armed police amid the tears and cries of their parents. They were thrown into trucks—sometimes with their arms and legs shackled together behind their backs—and driven to increasingly crowded detention centers and prisons. While small groups of police went to individual residences, larger detachments encircled the main Catholic institutions. Christ the King Parish and the buildings on the Xujiahui compound were once again occupied. One of the most surreal attacks was at the Carmelite convent located at the edge of Xujiahui.16 The convent housed some twenty cloistered nuns who—dedicated to a life of prayer and abnegation—hardly ever set foot in the outside “world,” which they had renounced. Under the pretense that two Chinese sisters had previously been Legionaries and were still working for the Legion, the convent had been targeted. Late on the night of September 8, armed police used ladders to climb over the high walls. They broke the windows and entered the property. The sisters were forced to assemble in one room while the police searched the premises. Then the police flew the flag above the convent: conquered terrain. Shanghai’s seminaries were the last Catholic seminaries operating in China and, as such, held the largest remaining concentration of Catholic religious personnel in all of China. Here, late that night, some three hundred seminarians were rounded up at gunpoint and assembled. The 149

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roster was read off, and the most influential seminarians were taken to a separate room. Their superior, Louis Jin Luxian, now the leading Jesuit in Shanghai, told his seminarians to “follow the government’s law.”17 For their part, the seminarians recalled their vows, made at Sheshan, to remain faithful to the church. Their moment of truth had come. Would they obey the Communist government or would they obey their church? Or could they—like Jin—fi nd some way to compromise between the two commands? This most basic question of fidelity would soon face nearly every Catholic in Shanghai. While most of the seminarians remained under house arrest at the seminary, Louis Jin Luxian and many of the priests and leading seminarians were herded into red police trucks and taken to prison. Sirens screamed all through the night. They announced the success of the simultaneous raids throughout the city. One former seminarian reported that his van had to be redirected to a larger prison because the smaller detention center he was originally destined for was already filled to capacity.18 Despite a few such minor logistical problems, the planning and execution of the raids succeeded brilliantly. The preparatory work had paid off. Another former seminarian would later report that during the shakedown, a cadre told him that he knew a great deal about the nature of Catholicism, for he had been studying it for the past three years, no doubt in preparation for that very night.19 For those arrested there was, above all, the anguishing personal cost. The noted preacher Francis X. Cai Shifang says: The September 8th incident was just the beginning of a long series of persecutions, which started in Shanghai, and soon spread all over China within a short time. . . . On that heartbreaking evening, many parents had to see their innocent children abducted and many husbands had to get ready to visit their spouses in prison. Some of the parents were not Catholic and they simply could not understand why their children were arrested. Some even begged their children to leave “this damned Church,” and refusal by their children to do so only added to the agony that they already had to endure. Even for Catholic families, the separation of husbands and wives, children and parents was heartbreaking. Some young toddlers would not let their mothers go; for the sake of their faith, their mothers in great pain pushed away their own children as they prepared for their journey. For me, everything was darkness and uncertainty within. We did not know where the 150

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journey would lead us, nor how we would be treated. We would be imprisoned and interrogated a thousand times, with the possibility of being sent into exile for labor reform. I am still surprised that I had the courage, with my eyes closed, to say, “Our Father, I submit to Your Will, regardless of the consequences.” Incredulous, we were like Jesus ready to drain our cup of sorrow, but we did not know what kind of sorrow was in store for us.20

Mass Denunciations, Confessions, and Arrests: September 9 to September 26 “Strongly, radically, completely, totally, let us liquidate the counterrevolutionaries hidden in the church and Kung Pinmei their leader,” read the headlines early on the morning of September 9. The slogan of the campaign was endlessly repeated at meetings. A shortened version of the slogan was also displayed prominently on long sidebars day after day in the Liberation Daily. The same day, the Shanghai News Daily reported the following: As a result of people’s information, and after investigation, the police smashed a counter-revolutionary clique led by Kung Pinmei concealed in Shanghai Catholic churches. Those arrested have been brought before the court in accordance with law. Under the guise of religion and with the protection of Catholic organizations, the members of this clique have engaged positively [sic] in collecting information throughout the country, and have supplied important military, political and economic secrets to imperialist espionage agencies.21 But the massive arrests of September 8—serious though they were— were, in fact, only the beginning of a meticulously planned and comprehensive new assault on the church. Party documents demonstrate that this “strike hard” campaign against the “Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique” would include mass accusation meetings, struggle sessions, and a daily barrage of propaganda. The goals for the first stage were as follows: Beginning on the 9th [of September] all recently-trained reporters and activists from every district and every unit were comprehensively put into action. . . . During the propaganda work, every day they took close note of every kind of new traitorous evidence found in the churches: weapons, prisons, reactionary orders, and a lot of 151

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KMT flags. They were all found during the investigation and published in the newspapers in the nick of time. We put our emphasis on denouncing the Kung Pinmei clique as the running dog of the imperialists and the traitor who had sold out the country. We also repeated the religious policies so that we could stimulate patriotic consciousness and righteous indignation. In this way, we progressively reduced the masses’ skepticism toward our religious policy.22 In this campaign, three major groups—the clergy, the Catholic “masses,” and the Catholic Youth—were targeted and dealt with in different ways. In fact, the same party report tells us that the core Catholic leadership, that is, those who could undertake “destructive activities”— including those named above, as well as other influential Catholics and “backward elements”—numbered about 1,200. They needed to be divided, broken down, and used—if possible—to influence the thinking of the Catholic masses. Let us take up each group. First, an essential part of the “struggle” was winning over the clergy. Already, on the morning of September 9, the fifty-four priests not yet imprisoned were rounded up and transported by car or taxi to a meeting hall for indoctrination sessions. George Wong, a young Chinese Jesuit who had spent some years of his Jesuit formation in the United States, gives an insider’s view of the indoctrination sessions that began that morning.23 The priests were fi rst told of the arrests of Bishop Kung and the leading Catholics. They were then given the newspaper articles hot off the presses. The articles denounced Kung for not allowing Catholic children to join Communist youth groups, maintaining close relations with foreign imperialists, frustrating various “patriotic” movements, and—fi nally—for denying the sacraments to “patriotic Catholics.”24 The priests were then divided into discussion sessions. Each day for the next two weeks, beginning after Mass and breakfast, the sessions continued at the local police station.25 Wong relates that they were lectured on “Chiang Kai-shek and the pope, American imperialism and the glory of Communism.”26 Wong’s account squares exactly with internal party documents which note that on the morning of September 9, the Shanghai RAB began its “struggle” against the clergy. With the leadership arrested and the people controlled, the CCP knew that the priests were isolated; they were “without a leader and without support.” At these meetings, the cadres “severely criticized the Shanghai Catholic Church and clergy and 152

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how they were used and controlled by the Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique,” thus putting national interests in danger. The cadres then “educated” the priests and “reduced their rampant arrogance [xiaozhang qiye].”27 Day after day, the police stepped up their pressure. The next phase— according to the party document—was to dispel the priests’ fears and illusions. One of their fears was losing their faith, and one of their illusions was that the regime’s attack on the church was merely temporary and ill advised. Some priests thought the CCP would drop its campaign against the church once another national campaign came along to absorb its energies. In other words, the church needed only to survive the present moment. For their part, then, the cadres needed to disabuse them of such illusions. They had to convince the priests that they were not going to lose their faith by submitting to a party-controlled church, and that the present campaign against the church was not going to end any time soon. That these priests had not yet been labeled as counterrevolutionaries meant the CCP had some hope for their “conversion.” Yet many of the priests continued to resist. The regime would later list the reasons the priests gave for their continued resistance: Bishop Kung committed no crimes and harbored no “unfriendly” attitude; the government was using the fight against counterrevolutionaries to cloak its attack on the church; they could not disobey their religious superiors; theism and atheism were incompatible; and perhaps most tellingly, it was “a moment of suffering for the church.”28 Faced with such resistance, the regime stepped up its pressure. It brought in “patriotic” believers and even “patriotic” priests to sow confusion and divide the holdouts. By September 17, the document notes, thirty priests had already begun to waver. The second group the government targeted was the Catholic “masses.” The Catholic laity was told that Kung had led them astray with a policy of the “three no’s”: not to listen, not to read, and not to speak. In contrast, the government now encouraged them to listen to pro-government speeches, to read newspapers, and to admit that there were imperialists in the church.29 The government also used the blunt state instrument of the mass accusation meeting. On September 12, the CCP brought together two thousand “activists and believers” to organize a “large-scale political meeting [zhengxie kwoda huiyi].”30 The document reveals little else about this large-scale meeting, but it is almost certain that this is the same meeting referred to by an eyewitness:31 153

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Present at the meeting were Catholics from all over Shanghai and mostly students of Zikawei [Xujiahui]. There were also soldiers keeping watch over the crowd. After all sorts of accusations were thrown at the Bishop, he was asked to speak. But the bishop remained silent. Then they thrust him in front of the mike and kept urging him to say something. The bishop seeing that there would be no end to this, raised his head and shouted “Long live Christ” several times. The crowd, mostly students followed up by shouting: “Long live the bishop,” but could only shout twice because the soldiers raised their rifles and Tommy guns and pointed them ordering them to keep quiet or they would open [fi re]. Then they pulled the bishop away from the mike and pushed him roughly into the waiting lorry and drove off. The bishop was dressed in a Chinese short jacket and trousers and had his hands tied behind his back.32 Clearly, Bishop Kung was defiant, and his resistance gave courage to his flock. Still, the CCP was in this struggle for the long term. Cadres continued educating the masses. During these two weeks, thousands of small meetings were held throughout various units and districts of the city. At these meetings, Catholics were forced to study newspaper articles, especially those in the Shanghai Liberation Daily, now—page after page—almost exclusively dedicated to the current campaign against Bishop Kung. The third group the regime targeted was the Catholic Youth. Former Legionaries—much as in 1951—were given yet another ultimatum to register with the government. Other young Catholics were targeted as well. The youth had done too much to frustrate the CCP’s plans. The 1956 report makes quite clear that the cadres spared no effort in trying to win them over to their side. Their tactics were quite sophisticated. The cadres knew that, besides their faith, what mattered most to young Catholics was the desire to honor their parents and to secure a good education. The CCP knew precisely which weak points to strike: Then we used every kind of method to aim at each person’s unique characteristics, and so win the psychological battle, destroying them one by one. For some we used their parent’s pressure, and for others the consequences of getting their diploma and obtaining work. We explained to them clearly the importance of [balancing] advantages and disadvantages and which path to follow. Then 154

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we pushed them to choose. Then, on this wavering foundation [of faith], we taught them to realize the crimes committed by the reactionary groups in the church and their danger to the youth. In this way, we passed through a very difficult thought struggle and persuasive education. A part of the college and university “Catholic Youth” began to change their opinion and they expressed their will to join our fight, and to help the other “Catholic Youth” to change so that they could strive for meritorious service and reduce crime. We passionately cared for them and encouraged them to make progress and solidify their transformation. At the same time we released repentant former leaders of the “Catholic Youth” like Li Wenzhi, and others.33 Many of the Catholic Youth cracked under the relentless pressure. If the regime was successful, these “repentant former leaders” were then given “intensive training” and used as a wedge to continue to divide and destroy the remainder of the Catholic Youth. Li Wenzhi was among the most zealous in this group. She was once one of the three pillars of the Catholic Youth. Thus, former Catholic militants would now work on behalf of the CCP. Here is how the “repentant” Catholic Youth were used at the indoctrination sessions: From September 8 to 18, they attended 28 big meetings. They gave a speech to 20,000 believers. From the 18th to the end of the month, we profoundly helped and persuaded the “Catholic Youth” who participated in the intensive training so that the great majority of them cleared out from the enemy side and joined our side, this work seriously hit the enemy’s vital point [yaohai]. It caused an earthquake and turmoil among both the cheated youth and the stubborn elements as well. A lot of them stopped their resistance and they confessed. This played a crucial role in dividing and destroying the entire foundation of the reactionaries of the Kung Pinmei clique among the masses.34 The regime had gone straight for the jugular. The resistance was in turmoil. It was now time for a victory rally. To this end, the three-pronged attack against the clergy, the masses, and the Catholic Youth came together. When the party was convinced that a critical mass of Catholic leaders, both clergy and laity, had been won over, and after all the local 155

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meetings and indoctrination sessions had met with at least some success, the party organized the “Shanghai Catholic Big Meeting.” It was held on Sunday, September 25, at the Shanghai Race Track, the only place in the city capable of accommodating such crowds. Forty priests and fourteen thousand people attended. These forty priests must have been the most pliable that the regime could use, as they were what remained of the original fifty-four priests not arrested immediately on September 8.35 Bishop Kung, who was not present, was denounced by vice mayor Liu Jiping and also by the Catholic “patriots” Hu Wenyao and Yang Shida. For the fi rst time, it would seem, Kung was also publicly denounced by a fellow priest. A certain Father Kang, from Wuxi, was brought in. A former Jesuit and an eloquent speaker in his own right, he verbally lashed out at the bishop, promising to promote an independent church in Shanghai by October 2.36 A Catholic eyewitness would later report that the meeting was “rigged” because there was no way to express disapproval. The movement’s slogan was interminably repeated, such that the eyewitness remembered it by heart: “Strongly, radically, completely, totally, let us liquidate the counter-revolutionaries hidden in the church and Kung Pinmei their leader.”37 According to the cadres, the “Shanghai Catholic Big Meeting” was the “climax of our popular movement.”38 The meeting, and the mass movement as a whole, was clearly having the desired effect of dividing the church. Priests were losing their authority over the people, and many believers “demonstrated their intention” to fight against the Kung clique.39 Yet there must have been a reason why Kung himself was not present at this meeting. The officials might have harbored the fear that he would once again speak out as he had done at the last rally. They could not risk another embarrassment. The day after the mass meeting, on September 26, the first phase of the movement was concluded. On that day an additional ten diocesan priests, nine Jesuits, thirty-eight seminarians, and five religious brothers and religious sisters were arrested, along with eight hundred lay Catholics.40 The outcome of the September phase of the campaign—and both Catholic and internal Communist sources square exactly here—was that the CCP had arrested about 1,200 of Shanghai’s leading Catholics.41 The sum result was that in Shanghai, “[t]hese [two arrests] destroyed the core leadership of the counterrevolutionaries, and the backbone of the reactionary power in the districts, units, and churches.”42 156

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Lacretelle’s Confession By late September 1955, Catholic unity was beginning to crack. After six solid years of Catholic resistance to the state’s religious policies, the CCP fi nally found something that would destroy the unity of the church. What was this secret weapon? Two years earlier, on June 15, 1953, Fernand Lacretelle, the “saintly” Jesuit mission superior, had been arrested at gunpoint. At the time, he had told his captors to put their guns away because he was a priest and would not resist arrest. He was already incarcerated when the crowds assembled outside to demand his release. “Long live Lacretelle,” they yelled in defiance. Lacretelle would have done well to have known of the outpouring of Catholic support during the bitter loneliness and excruciating pain he would soon face at Lujiawan prison. For, between his June 1953 arrest, and his release in July 1954, Lacretelle was interrogated for some 550 hours about his activity in Shanghai, Haizhou, and the related dioceses.43 The long sessions, he would later explain, had been more difficult psychologically than physically. In addition, he was forced to write a confession. When Lacretelle reached Hong Kong, he told fellow Jesuits that he had written a 769-page statement.44 After every five or six pages, the guards would take away what he had written, so he could not refer back to his previous notes.45 “Each time he wrote a confession, officials pointed out contradictions, so he would revise. He was told to accuse Bishop Kung in the process, which he did.”46 He was also told to make a tape recording, which he also did. By the end, Lacretelle’s confession was complete.47 Lacretelle’s confession provided the police with a propaganda and information bonanza. It was a propaganda victory because here was the highest-ranking Jesuit in Shanghai, and the closest confidant to Bishop Kung, claiming that Kung was an imperialist. This was damaging enough, but other missionaries would also later make the same statement under duress. Lacretelle’s confession went further. It implicated fellow priests by name. In fact, he admitted that he had personally organized these priests. This “clique” of priests should be familiar to us as the leaders of the catechism group movement and the preaching band. Lacretelle’s original confession is probably still housed in the PSB Archives. Until this material is declassified, the following newspaper version gives a sense of the most damning part of the original confession: I opposed the People’s Government and incited others to oppose the Government. I secretly organized a ‘small clique of fathers’ 157

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. . . as the nucleus for the leadership of the movement against the People’s Government. I exploited doctrine study groups, retreats, and various forms of preaching in the churches to organize a force against the Government. I now admit that these acts of mine are imperialist acts. I admit that I am an imperialist. I admit my serious mistakes in opposing the People’s Government call for rigorous punishment.48 The confession was an information bonanza as well, for—until his arrest in June 1953—Lacretelle knew almost everything the church was doing to defend itself. Indeed, he himself was a prime architect of the Catholic resistance. Lacretelle was privy to information that, when seen through the lens of the Chinese security apparatus, could prove to be devastating for the church. In the end, Lacretelle told the police everything he knew about church organization and leadership. He told them there was an equipe (team) of priests, the “leadership nucleus,” who directed the catechism groups. The CCP saw in this equipe not a movement dedicated to catechizing young Catholics, but a nefarious group bent on overthrowing the CCP. In fact, the press chose not to translate, but to transliterate, the French equipe into the mysterious-sounding Chinese: ai-ji-po. To this day, the state-controlled media repeats the same story: “The French Jesuits who controlled the Shanghai Diocese selected several intellectual young priests who followed the Vatican’s political orders, [and] organized a secret core team called the ‘equipe’ in French, to serve as a think tank against the people’s political power.”49 Years later, Louis Jin Luxian, former superior of the seminary and once a member of the so-called equipe, explained the harm he and the rest of the church suffered as a result of Lacretelle’s confession. To this day Jin ponders why others do not “hate” Lacretelle for what he did.50 He cracked and confessed everything to the Shanghai police. After the Communists had taken power, we established small secret committees in the novitiate. We—laymen, priests, and seminarians—would meet in an effort to organize and prepare ourselves to confront the Communist persecution. We were preparing ourselves for a future bound to be more difficult under the ever-more oppressive rule of the regime. We would lay out various scenarios spanning the spectrum from optimistic to tragic. We had to learn to oppose ourselves to a radical ideology, the dimensions of whose repressive tactics we did not fully know. What were they capable 158

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of in their efforts to indoctrinate us into their patriotic movement? How far would they go in their arrests of Christians? For how long? We knew nothing, but they knew everything about us. . . . He [Lacretelle] confessed everything under pressure: our clandestine organization, our regular meetings, the messengers, the group leaders, the names of the most active Catholics.51 By the time Louis Jin Luxian was arrested on September 8, the police knew everything. Some crucial information came from Lacretelle and additional material came from other Catholics. Jin fills in some gaps as to the kind of additional intelligence that the police were able to gather.52 First, the church was using the black market. Before people fled Shanghai, they would deposit their money with the church and obtain a receipt. When they arrived in Hong Kong, they would present the receipt to George Germain and obtain US currency. Such transactions had been made illegal by the government. Second, as we saw earlier, the church had already formed the underground convent called Home, as well as the underground Jesuit novitiate run by two French Jesuits. Third, the church had used a broker to get some Catholics out of China, most notably young seminarians and religious sisters. It was hoped they would have a fruitful apostolic life abroad rather than spend the rest of their days languishing in prisons and labor camps. Fourth, the church had established an approved line of succession to replace Kung should he be arrested. Finally, church leaders had held meetings on how to survive under the regime. How did the PSB obtain Lacretelle’s confession? According to Jesuit missionaries now stationed in Taiwan, the Lacretelle who entered CCP custody and the one who emerged more than a year later were two different men.53 Who was the original Lacretelle? He was austere and “saintly.” His saintly reputation was earned for his signal service to the church. This was probably due to his intense religious upbringing. His obituary would note that he was from “a deeply Christian family.”54 From an early age, the church was his home; and as a Jesuit superior, he had an unyielding devotion to every document that came from Rome.55 He also had an unyielding devotion to the poor. He was solicitous of the rickshaw pullers from the despised and impoverished Jiangbei region north of Shanghai. Further, “all his religious life he got up at 3:30 a.m. to ensure his life of prayer in the calm and silence of the early morning. He used to say Mass at 5 a.m., in Zikawei [Xujiahui], for female workers who had to go very early to the spinning-mills in Shanghai.”56 In short, 159

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Lacretelle loved the church and he loved the poor. He was an exemplary priest: a Jesuit’s Jesuit. How did the “saintly” Lacretelle break? In short, he broke under intense physical and psychological pressure. While Lacretelle was in custody at the Lujiawan detention center, the police used the classic strategy of exploiting a prisoner’s weaknesses. And Lacretelle’s greatest weakness was his health. For years, Lacretelle had suffered from a bad stomach for which he had to wear a support belt.57 Moreover, he had contracted tuberculosis in his youth. The police went to work on these physical ailments. During his thirteen months in prison, Lacretelle was deprived of his medical belt and forced to squat for long hours in his prison cell. “As a result, the natural functions were troubled and blood poisoning developed.”58 By December, the midpoint of his imprisonment, his weight had dropped down to about ninety-five pounds, and he had nearly died several times. After each brush with death, he was sent to the Ward Road Jail hospital where he was nursed back to life. Then he was transported back to Lujiawan for further interrogations. Second, the police also used psychological tactics to break Lacretelle’s resistance. According to interviews with Jesuit missionaries in Taiwan, the story circulated that Lacretelle was given newspapers and news items that showed that Catholics were denouncing each other and him personally. These articles were fabricated and custom made for Lacretelle. But after reading the deliberate misinformation long enough, Lacretelle began to believe it. The police also lied to Lacretelle, telling him that if he confessed they would not accuse Kung and the others. The sum result was devastating. Finally, after months of physical and psychological pressure, the police fi nally had what they wanted: a broken and pliable man. Now the CCP would use him as the wedge to split wide open the Shanghai Catholic community. The regime had big plans for Lacretelle. In fact, it was originally planning to put him on the world stage at a strategic moment. It was only at the Geneva Conference in 1954 and through the direct intervention of the French prime minister, Pierre Mendés-France, that the Chinese government backed down, and—instead—expelled Lacretelle from the country.59 In July 1954, Lacretelle reached Hong Kong a confused and broken man, with a mind “like that of a child.”60 When he reached safety, he remembered with precision that he had been interrogated for 550 hours 160

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and that he had written 769 pages of confessions. Yet he was convinced that he had done nothing to betray the church. His testimony was soon contradicted. Shortly after his arrival in Hong Kong, the mainland newspapers printed a small portion of his confession in his own handwriting. At that point, Lacretelle was forced to disavow anything that he had written in prison. Lacretelle’s situation raises more questions than it answers. How could he remember the duration of his interrogations but not remember much of anything that had transpired? How could he remember the exact length of his written confession but not remember its content? In Lacretelle’s subsequent letters written over the years, he speaks of his “weakness,” but he never mentions betraying the church. Was Lacretelle simply trying to save face, or was he genuinely convinced that he had not damaged the church? Lacretelle’s brokenness leads to a further twist in the story, for according to Louis Jin Luxian, Lacretelle’s confession was compounded by his denial. To this day, Jin can forgive Lacretelle for buckling under the psychological pressure, but he cannot forgive him for an event that followed.61 When Lacretelle arrived in Hong Kong, he sent a postcard-sized letter—through some back channels—to Bishop Kung. Kung then showed it to Jin. The note read as follows: “While I was in prison, I said nothing that would betray the mission, nothing.”62 Having received this note from Lacretelle, both Jin and Kung were convinced that Lacretelle had, in fact, said nothing. In fact, the exact opposite had turned out to be the case. But then why did Lacretelle apparently write this letter, then deny ever having written it? To this day, Jin finds the turn of events most “curious.”63 After the September 1955 arrests, Lacretelle further denied being in contact with Bishop Kung. He had become aware that the Liberation Daily was reporting that Kung had corresponded with him and that they were in a plot together. He stated categorically, “[h]appily, I have never written to him, nor has he written to me.”64 Did Lacretelle write this “letter of denial” or not? Indeed, Lacretelle’s confession and subsequent denial is one of the most “curious” events in this entire history. Convinced that they had not been betrayed, Jin explains what happened next: We should never have believed the letter, for we continued our activities per the normal routine, persuaded that nothing had been leaked to the Communists. But it was a lie; because he had told 161

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everything to the police they were able to follow us discretely, so as to note down all of our movements, the names of those in charge . . . If we had known that he had told the police everything, we would have changed our strategy, stopped certain tactics, and changed our meeting spots . . . On the contrary, we did not cease to develop our secret activities. The political commissars must certainly have been laughing in the depths of their heart. They knew everything. I know it because when I was in prison they showed me his written confession and the recorded cassettes of all his revelations . . . It’s horrible, you know, because the police knew exactly how to set us against each other, demoralize us, and make us confess.65 Lacretelle’s confession and subsequent denial is a most perplexing—in fact, a most tragic—episode. Yet the damage was done. (A Catholic businessman later mused that without this tragedy, Shanghai Catholics could have held out for another two years.)66 The CCP now had precisely what it wanted. It used Lacretelle’s confession for the propaganda and intelligence value it provided, which led to massive arrests. Now the police would use his confession—as well as the confessions of other missionaries—to decisively smash Catholic morale.

Catholic Unity Unravels The police had already begun to exploit Lacretelle’s confession as early as his expulsion in July 1954, when they published a facsimile of part of his handwritten confession in the Shanghai newspapers: “In recognition that my actions are opposed to the people’s government, I recognize their imperialist character, and admit that I am an imperialist.”67 Further, even before the September arrests, select Catholics were called in to listen to parts of Lacretelle’s tape-recorded confession.68 After September 8, the confessions would be used for their full propaganda value. Lacretelle’s confession was the most important and, it would appear, the most complete confession, but the press would also report on confessions by Tom Phillips and Charles McCarthy as well. Lacretelle’s taped confession was broadcast in prisons and detention centers. Shanghai Catholics instantly recognized the voice of the Jesuit mission superior. The result was devastating. So devastating, in fact, that one young seminarian from the time said that before writing or taping 162

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his confession, Lacretelle should have not been afraid—right there in his prison cell—to die. Another Catholic would later say, “Our church leaders’ failure had driven me to despair and crushed my spirit.”69 The church would now drink from its “cup of suffering.” For the confession was now used to confound the priests. The earliest recorded instance as to when the recording was played for a large number of priests—including thirty wavering priests—was on September 17.70 They heard Lacretelle’s denunciation of Kung and his gratitude to the government for saving the “church in Shanghai from the road of death on which Kung Pinmei was leading it.”71 Then the cadres told the priests, “We do not accuse Bishop Kung; it is your own leader who has accused [him].”72 If Lacretelle could criticize Kung, the priests argued, why couldn’t they?73 The regime had delivered the coup de grace; Catholic unity was decisively broken. In time, of the fifty-six priests present at the meetings, twenty-eight confessed that Kung Pinmei was a counterrevolutionary, twenty-two of them had to be severely “struggled” against, and only six remained “stubborn and reactionary.”74 The priests then began to draft a declaration denouncing Kung as a counterrevolutionary. Ten days later, the cadres held another meeting in which they invited four or five “patriotic” priests to convince the rest of the priests of Kung’s crimes. Then, on October 15, they held another meeting for fifty-four priests, during which sixteen influential priests “gave speeches supporting the united declaration and also talked about their own experience of changing their thoughts.”75 The cadres then amended the united declaration. By that time forty-seven priests of this group of fifty-four had signed the declaration. But the declaration, according to some priests, had been obtained by artifice. Even internal CCP documents would later admit that there was a “battle in the signature and the official publication.”76 Lefeuvre gives the following account.77 Three “patriotic” priests wrote up a letter, a letter which many priests objected to because they distrusted its tone and content. The letter was revised, and the remaining priests then signed the revised document. But their names were affi xed to the original— harsher—declaration, which was then published in the newspapers. Surely, the priests had been duped. By the time the declaration was published, fully seventy-five priests from thirty-seven churches in the Shanghai and Suzhou dioceses had their names published in the newspapers, showing that they had signed at least some form of the declaration. Only four priests who were still “free” did not sign the document. 163

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By mid-October, there was a request for more cadres to handle the increased work load of dismantling the church.78 The party had achieved “basic success,” but there was still work to be done. In fact, hundreds of indoctrination sessions were now taking place throughout the city. The document continued: [I]n the upcoming long period of time, the struggle will remain very complicated. In order to ensure success, to educate the masses more systematically, and to control the enemies’ activities, we therefore need to establish an administration that can correspond to the struggle situation, and keep up the day-to-day struggles [as well] until the end of the movement.79 To this end, the document requested that Xuhui (Xujiahui) and Luwan (Lujiawan) receive the most cadres, twelve at Xuhui and nine at Luwan. Other districts with smaller Catholic populations would receive correspondingly fewer cadres. These cadres should all be “politically seasoned, have certain policy standards, and struggle experience,” the document notes.80 Only later, depending on the situation in each district, would the party be able to reduce the number of cadres. The document shows that on October 27, both Shi Ximin and Chen Yiming, the key officials prosecuting the “Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique,” signed off on the request for additional cadres, cadres specially trained in “religious work.” Throughout much of October, cadres made a block-by-block survey of the city to discover Catholics who might have missed the previous indoctrination sessions. Then they brought in “repentant” priests—often those with authority or who were well known to the people—to denounce Kung. Their efforts paid off. At least one Catholic became convinced that if “the priests already speak like that, it removes the burden from my heart, so that I can set my mind at peace in opposing Kung Pinmei.”81 But what of the staunch young Catholics, pillars of the church militant? At meetings with the families of the Catholic Youth the cadres again used “patriotic” priests to break down resistance. One family member was recorded as tearfully saying, “When the people’s police arrested my son, not only didn’t I cry, but I also called on him to martyr himself for God. Now I know my son was cheated by the counterrevolutionaries.”82 What of the incarcerated priests? The police continued to find creative ways to break their resistance and make them give in to party demands. Take the case of Louis Jin Luxian, the highest-ranking Jesuit left in 164

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Shanghai. Jin says that he was taken to the Railway Station Jail. He was never beaten, but for six to seven months, he was interrogated every night from 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. After such brutal interrogations, it was difficult to fall asleep, and at 6 a.m. came the wake-up call. For each of those terrible months, Jin was only able to sleep several hours each night.83 As a result of such pressure, Jin seems to be, if not the fi rst, then one of the fi rst native Shanghai Jesuits to succumb and tape a confession. It could have been made as early as October. Some Catholic survivors, no doubt scarred by their experiences, have a further reason for his quick capitulation. To this day, they insist that—before the September arrests—Jin had been entrapped and blackmailed and that the police had damaging photographic evidence.84 When shown this evidence after his 1955 arrest, “Jin completely capitulated. It was at that moment that he revealed all the interior workings of the church.”85 This story still circulates among those who remember. Other versions of the story are even more damning. For his part, Jin does not deny that he confessed or that he was recorded on tape. However, he does insist that after Lacretelle’s confession, anything he himself might have added could not have been that important.86 Further, once one is in the hands of the security apparatus—Jin reminds us—it is very hard to resist.

Shanghai’s Priests Denounce Bishop Kung’s “Road of Death” By early December, the CCP was assured of two points. First, no matter how the priests’ declaration was ultimately obtained, the fact remained that seventy-five priests had signed some kind of document denouncing Kung. It was an ace up their sleeve. Second, the CCP was reasonably sure that it could not co-opt Kung into leading the “reformed” church. Thus, it was now time to make an example of Kung to the rest of the world. Because the Shanghai Liberation Daily was embargoed for publication outside of China, the People’s Daily and the Xinhua News Agency served as the outside world’s window into China. Up to that point Kung’s arrest had only been mentioned in the Shanghai newspapers. Now it was time for the news to be broadcast throughout Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. (Indeed the New York Times, quoting from a Moscow Radio report, reported the news as well.) “Shanghai Public Security Authorities Proceed with Examination of [the] Kung Pinmei Counter-Revolutionary Clique” ran the December 10 article in the People’s Daily.87 The whole article took up nearly an entire 165

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broadsheet, complete with two photographs of military equipment purportedly seized from the Kung clique. The long article is basically a concatenation of the primary evidence against the “Kung Pinmei clique.” Some of the information is boilerplate material that had been repeatedly used in the previous campaigns against the church. The remaining material was mostly “new” evidence discovered in the most recent campaign.88 It is in this article that we fi nally—more than two years after the events occurred—have an official recognition of the CCP’s displeasure with the demonstrations at Xujiahui and Christ the King: In June 1953, when imperialist agents Lacretelle and others were arrested by our public security authorities, Kung Pinmei incited a portion of reactionary elements to create disturbances at the scenes of arrest, who cried reactionary slogans, distributed reactionary pamphlets, and obstructed the public security personnel in the performance of their duty.89 The same issue of the People’s Daily also had a front-page editorial in much the same vein: “Counter-revolutionaries Will Never Be Allowed to Exploit Religion for Subversive Activities.”90 The main point of the editorial: “What the Kung Pin-mei counter-revolutionary clique did had absolutely nothing to do with religious belief.”91 And later: “Religious believers are religious believers, and counter-revolutionaries are counterrevolutionaries; the dividing line is clear enough.”92 Having made its case against Kung, the People’s Daily was ready to deliver the fi nal blow. The following day it published the declaration of the seventy-five priests, which showed a signature date of October 15. The unmistakable conclusion: the majority of priests had—two months previously—already capitulated. The CCP knew that the best way to destroy the enemy was from within, and so the declaration—signed as it was by the priests themselves—was a corporate confession of wrongdoing. The declaration was most effective.93 The declaration gives a revised, CCP version of the history. It says that when Kung was made bishop, “the fi rst Chinese ever to head the Bishopric,” Catholics hoped that he would be a good leader and “uphold his national spirit and patriotism. But the facts of the past six years have proven completely the contrary.” In fact, Kung was chosen bishop “entirely through the recommendation of Lacretelle” and Germain.94 The declaration then states that both Lacretelle and Germain admitted to opposing the government. Using guilt by association, it asserts 166

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that when Lacretelle reached Hong Kong after his expulsion, Kung wrote to him on the same day, “I hope you are healthy as ever, and in a short while will continue to openly lead us.” The conclusion is clear: “And after Lacretelle had already admitted himself an imperialist, Kung Pin-mei still wanted him ‘in a short while’ to ‘continue to openly’ lead him. What was his real intention?”95 The declaration lists many of Kung’s supposed “crimes.” He opposed land reform; he had a “glorious” Mass for “criminals” in April 1952, on the fi rst anniversary of the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement; he harbored secret agents in Catholic institutions; he withheld support for the Korean War; and he stood in the way of the “universal truth” of patriotism. The document then contrasts the new government, “a good government never before seen in China’s history,”96 with Kung’s crimes. Kung had actually stopped Catholics from loving their country, they insisted, and had separated them from the “new society.” The declaration includes the following expression of gratitude: Kung Pinmei and his colleagues exploit the name of religion to engage in such political activities which sabotage the State, and these acts are certainly not those to be done by a Bishop, a priest. We thank God for His wise guidance in that the People’s Government had [sic] taken proper measures to save our Church in Shanghai from the road of death on which Kung Pinmei was leading it.97 It was a bold statement, no doubt, for here we see that the CCP allows— through the words of the priests—a direct reference to God, a God who now seemingly guides the very actions of the Communist Party. The party has thus saved the church from going down Kung’s road of death. In mid-December (we have no exact date) there was another mass accusation meeting to humiliate Kung. A Carmelite nun, an eyewitness to the event, would relate the following in a letter.98 For three hours seven seminarians and nuns—themselves recently released from prison—denounced the bishop. Kung “had to listen to a storm of accusations hammered by the screams of the mob. . . . The Bishop remained calm and silent and at a certain time held his hand over his heart.”99 By early 1956, under intense pressure, Bishop Kung himself made a several-hundred-page confession. According to an eyewitness of the document, it contained all the standard material about working for the US and against China. Yet Kung tried to fi nd a way to confess without really confessing and to avoid denouncing others. 167

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Catholic unity had been broken. The CCP was now dominant. It had struck the shepherd and the sheep had scattered. Next, the CCP set about defi nitively setting up a puppet church. Soon two “churches” began to take shape in Shanghai: one loyal to Rome, the other loyal to the CCP. The former was progressively dismantled; the latter progressively co-opted. By December, at least one priest, the Jesuit Louis Zhang Duanliu, had gone to Beijing for a two-week meeting.100 He would soon become a key figure in the puppet church. One Catholic—released from prison during a period of relaxation in October 1956—remembers those tense and confusing days: The bishop and most of the priests who remained faithful to the Pope as the head of the Church were still in prison. Only a few who had given in through weakness or had become confused in mind were released for a time. But they were still being watched and, depending on their behavior, could be re-arrested or used as the government required. Foreign priests and missionaries had all been expelled and sent back to their own countries. “The Catholic Three-Self-Renewal Committee” had become the preparatory committee for the establishment of the Catholic Patriotic Association. It was simply an instrument of the government which was a powerful agent for the destruction of our Church. The Association had formed a group made up of . . . opportunists or [those] who had given in, together with some who had joined for other reasons of their own. Their special task was to implement a stick and carrot policy towards Catholics, ostensibly to win them over to the government-controlled “Catholic Church,” while, in fact, they were going to destroy religion completely and establish the Communist “religion.”101 The Communist “religion” was now ascendant. All that was needed was to mop up what little Catholic resistance remained. Indeed, the church militant was being dismantled by the hour.

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We created the new leadership of the church. We can control this leader, and we are using different methods to help this church leader gain the believers’ and the priests’ support. SMA, A22–1–233

The CCP was expert in cracking recalcitrant organizations. By December 1955—after a six-year “war”—it had decisively smashed Catholic resistance in Shanghai. With the legitimate bishop imprisoned along with 1,200 leading Catholics, the Shanghai Diocese was effectively dismantled. Now the CCP had to demonstrate that no such thing had ever happened. After all, the regime had—over the years—repeatedly said it was not against the Catholic Church; it was only against “counterrevolutionaries hiding under the cloak of religion.” The best way to show that the “church” still existed was to fi nally establish a puppet church, a “church” that answered only to the party. At this point, the regime had three major goals: to establish an independent church under the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), to educate Catholics to support this independent church, and to imprison any who stood in its way. As for Catholic resistance to state encroachment, although it was not as active and organized as it had been in the past, it did continue in more passive and scattered forms.

Establishing a Puppet Church: Finding a Leader Having created a power vacuum, the CCP then moved to fi ll it. Already, on the morning after the arrests of September 8, the newspapers mentioned the eventual establishment of the Shanghai CCPA. Up to that point, it had existed in name only. The earlier Three-Self Reform Movement had failed. But the CCP still had to fi nd a way to control the church. Even 169

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the new name was telling. Rather than focusing on the “progressive,” “independent,” or “reformed” nature of the new church, the authorities appealed instead to the nationalistic sensibilities of Shanghai’s Catholics. This was to be a “patriotic” church. Who could argue with that? The CCP was changing its methods, but not its objectives. Setting up a puppet church would be a slow process. The March 1956 document shows that the party proceeded in stages.1 The first stage was to “educate” both the clergy and laity. The CCP began with the clergy, who were subjected to two sets of indoctrination sessions. The first set of sessions, held in December, discussed anti-imperialism. These sessions proved the crimes committed by imperialists hiding in the church, and they denounced the political tendencies of church leaders like Riberi and Spellman. Even so, the cadres tried to reassure the priests that they would still be allowed a “purely spiritual” link with the Vatican. Yet the authorities soon discovered that many priests still held Rome in “blind obedience.”2 Even after the fi rst set of sessions, the regime’s goals had yet to be reached. And so a second set of sessions was called for in mid-January. Both sets of sessions seem to have been held at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Dongjiadu, the main residence for diocesan priests in Shanghai. There were three points to the second set of sessions: to stand on the side of the people, to realize Rome’s counterrevolutionary activity, and to criticize their own wrong speech and wrong action. The eventual result of the two sets of sessions was that, of the fifty-four priests who took part, sixteen were deemed “patriotic,” sixteen did not improve, nineteen were in the middle, and three were still considered counterrevolutionary.3 In January the CCP also went to work on the Catholic laity—namely, two thousand representative Catholics—by starting a movement “to denounce the Vatican.” In these sessions, the laity also showed some of the same concerns as the clergy. They wanted to safeguard the link with the pope. The cadres had best proceed carefully, for this stage of the campaign was quite sensitive. Yet, the trouble was—as party documents reveal—some over-zealous cadres were complicating the “religious work.” They were forcing believers to admit that the pope was an imperialist. They further insisted that Catholics needed to cut all links with Rome, even “purely spiritual” ones. Their zeal was proving to be counterproductive.4 By March, the officials felt they had succeeded in rallying a large enough group of “patriotic” clergy to their side. In addition, they had co-opted the highest ranking among them by giving them “honors and 170

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privileges.” What force could not accomplish, self-aggrandizement would. It was a temptation—sadly enough—especially appealing to a celibate clergy. The CCP, for its part, had found yet another weakness in the church. The stage was now set to install a puppet. On March 15, the CCP pressed a “council” of priests to elect an acting bishop. As a compromise, they chose the seventy-five-year-old Francis X. Zhang Shiliang, who accepted. (Normally, Catholic bishops submit their resignation at that age. But this was not a normal situation.) Then, on March 20, the same “council” telegrammed Rome the fait accompli and asked for the papal mandate of consecration. The telegram read: “Bishop Kung Pinmei has been arrested by the government because of treason. According to Canon 429, article 3, we have made Zhang X X the acting bishop.”5 The CCP made the case that Kung was a criminal and had therefore been justly imprisoned. In his absence, the “church” had been forced to select a successor. It was a bold power play. The March 1956 party document gives the real reason Zhang was chosen: “We can control this leader, and we are using different methods to help this church leader gain the believers’ and the priests’ support.”6 Rome responded immediately. Bishops could only be chosen by the pope. Moreover, the “most worthy Bishop of Shanghai” was now “unjustly imprisoned.”7 Rome had flatly contradicted the CCP’s claims. Even in Kung’s absence, the diocese would continue to be governed according to the same Canon 429, article 3. This article stipulated that “if the episcopal see be impeded by the imprisonment, arrest, exile, or incapacity of the bishop,” then “the government of the diocese, so long as the Holy See does not dispose otherwise, shall rest in the hands of the vicar general or some other ecclesiastic designated by the bishop.”8 Even the 1956 party document references Rome’s response, though it admits that Rome did “not agree with Shanghai’s procedure.”9 The situation was becoming bizarre. The CCP attempted to interpret church law for the church, and the church—the authentic interpreter of its own law— had to respond. The two sides were at an impasse. Francis X. Zhang Shiliang was a diocesan priest. While he was allowing himself to be used by the CCP, he most likely thought he could “save what could be saved.” He defended the merits of his case. This is evidenced by a letter he wrote to a Shanghai Catholic then living in Hong Kong.10 In this letter, he recounts that he had truly been named vicar capitular for Shanghai, for in 1950, he had been one of three designated successors to Kung should Kung himself be imprisoned. Sylvester 171

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Zhu Xuefan, the vicar general and second in command in the diocese, was fi rst and he was second, but Sylvester Zhu had been imprisoned in December 1955. The list of successors, he says, was valid for three years after October 3, 1953. Further, because he had been elected by the diocesan councilors and had notified Rome, everything had followed canon law. Zhang’s letter also accused a priest now in Hong Kong—almost certainly Germain himself—of causing all the trouble and stirring up opposition to him. In fact, the March 1956 party document mentions—correctly—that copies of Rome’s telegram were being sent to clergy throughout Shanghai. Therefore, while Zhang Shiliang may have thought he had a case, the fact was that Rome did not recognize him. That was information enough for many Shanghai Catholics. They resisted the “acting bishop.” Kung was still the sole legitimate leader. The attempt to install a puppet leader had failed. “Our fight against Vatican control over the Chinese independent church has just begun,” the party document candidly states.11 Tellingly enough, the twenty-page March 1956 top-secret report— which has proven so essential—ends at this point. Perhaps the CCP thought that naming the new acting bishop would be the fi nal stage of its “religious work.” In fact, destroying the Catholic Church in Shanghai and erecting a puppet church was going to be a painstaking process. To this end, the fi nal section of the report reflects on the lessons learned in the long campaign. There are four major points. The third point is the most revealing, for it calls upon the cadres to “strengthen our secret work, establish our hidden power, and prepare a long-term struggle with the enemy.” In fact, the campaign would be divided into public and secret spheres. And all of it had to be done under the “concentrated and united leadership of the party.”12 The reason for employing classic Leninist strategy was to counter the still-formidable Shanghai Catholic Church: The enemy has a lot of struggle experience. They use secret and public, legal and illegal, combat methods to deal with us. They also use the special characteristics of the Catholic religion and its organization to strictly control believers and gain the blind confidence of the people. Therefore, the whole struggle must be under the highly centralized and unified leadership of the party. Only in this way can we establish our roots and orientation in the work, unite in the firm struggle and flexible policies, and have an overview and 172

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plan for the whole situation. We must sufficiently mobilize different party organizations at different levels, and profoundly mobilize the people so that our struggle against the Catholic Church becomes the whole party’s task. In this way, we can put into concrete action our plans and policies and finally gain victory. Our work still has a lot of shortcomings and mistakes, [and our] experiences are also not fully complete. The difficult struggle still lies ahead.13 In other words, it would still take some effort to completely subdue Shanghai’s church militant.

A Church Divided The CCP had candidly admitted its “shortcomings and mistakes.” It would now lose no time trying to “gain victory.” The CCP had not yet been able to destroy the church. But it had decisively managed to divide it into opposing camps: the Vatican “loyalists” and the “patriotics.” In this climate, the “patriotic” church fi nally began to take defi nitive form. It could now count on the support of the “patriotic” clergy, those priests who had compromised with the regime. These priests could be easily identified now because they were still allowed to function openly in Shanghai, and the great majority had proven their loyalty to the regime by signing the declaration against their bishop. (Loyal Catholics referred to them as “patriotic” priests and avoided them. However, there is no evidence that any of them—at this point—had been formally excommunicated.) These “patriotic” priests proved useful to the regime. They now controlled most of the parishes, and they administered—with impunity— communion to “patriotic” Catholics, and to members of the Communist Youth League as well. This was the very practice that had been forbidden by the Vatican. It was a powerful blow against the unity of the church. Previously, “patriotic” Catholics had been singled out and barred from receiving communion. If they wanted to return to the church, they had to retract their statements and make public penance. Now, as the regime gained the upper hand, it could frustrate these policies and count on the support of the “patriotic” priests. The majority of the priests who were not imprisoned qualified as “patriotic” priests, and they at least passively went along with the dictates of the “patriotic” church. Yet a handful of priests took a far more 173

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active role in collaborating with the regime. The fi rst was the most obvious: Zhang Shiliang, who accepted the post of “acting bishop.” But there were others as well, such as the Jesuit Louis Zhang Jiashu (previously known as Zhang Duanliu). By the autumn of 1956, the CCP reestablished the Xujiahui seminary under his direction. This “enthusiastic supporter” of the Patriotic Association would now make sure all future clergy were politically correct. Other “patriotic” priests included Li Side (Li Dequan), dean of the Caojiadu region, Fan Liangzuo (previously a charismatic leader of the youth), and Chen Fumin. As for the “loyal” priests who were still “free”: they were kept under heavy surveillance, marginalized by the regime, and threatened with imprisonment on a moment’s notice. Laypeople also established themselves as important “patriotics.” One of the most notable was Lu Weidu, none other than the son of the famous Catholic philanthropist Lo Pahong (Lu Baihong), who had done so much to finance the construction of Catholic Shanghai. There was also Tang Lüdao, a graduate of Aurora Medical College; and, naturally, both Hu Wenyao and Yang Shida, “apostates” from the beginning. The most zealous “patriotics” were “converted” former members of the Catholic Youth, the most notable being Li Wenzhi, previously esteemed as one of the three pillars of the youth. According to loyal Catholics, she had sold her soul to the regime. By the fall of 1956, she had set up her office—the Committee of the Patriotic Catholic Church—at a convent near Christ the King Parish.14 From there she prosecuted the remnants of the loyal church. The numbers of “patriotic” Catholics were not insignificant. In time, the official mouthpiece of the “patriotic” church, the revivified Courier Dove (Xin Ge), counted five hundred active “patriotic” Catholics. The great majority of Shanghai Jesuits were now in prison. The remaining “free” Jesuits were badly divided. They pitched themselves into opposing camps even at Xujiahui. The main residence housed those loyal to Rome, while the church rectory housed those who sided with the CCP.15 By June 1957, the “superior” of the Jesuit community—by reason of age—was Vincent Xu Zonghai. However, the real leader of the community—one under the thumb of the CCP—was Brother Kou (Gu), a “formidable hysteric.”16 He was mentally ill, and he had gained notoriety for having once tried to tear off the beard of a French Jesuit. Divisions in the church as a whole led to a great deal of confusion. Revered figures had made confessions denouncing Bishop Kung, the entire church leadership had been imprisoned, and the “patriotics” were 174

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increasingly emboldened. Suspicion and fear reigned. The cadres had— no doubt—done much to sow the confusion. They proceeded on several fronts. Throughout 1956, they released Catholics and then arrested them again at will. They infi ltrated the remaining catechism groups. Catholics wondered whom they could trust. Who was a government informer? Why were some Catholics still jailed and others released? Could they still trust priests who had signed the declaration? Could they still trust those who had been released from prison? Who was telling the truth and who was lying? In fact, there was “[n]o way of distinguishing between those who are good and those who are bad,” wrote one Shanghai Catholic.17 The most complete information about the tense and confusing situation experienced by Catholics throughout 1956 and 1957 comes from a seminarian who escaped to Macau in June 1957. The fi rst section of his report follows: The current situation in Shanghai can only be understood if one has personally experienced it, otherwise it would strike one as unbelievable. In the seminary, there are priests and brothers tainted by contact with the Communists. The same is true of parishioners in the pews. They report on the activities of Christians, manipulating the church in ways more egregious than the Communists do. A priest has only two paths to choose from: either he goes to prison, or he dishonors himself; there is no middle path. Would you believe it? “One either follows the Pope or becomes a progressive”. . . . While many of the faithful have no work, even more numerous are the young with no schooling. Let us pray that the Blessed Mother might make miracles, whereby the faithful will be bolstered in the Faith and that they might not despair. There are only one or two parishes that are entirely good. When the faithful leave church, not even those who have known each other for many years risk greeting each other anymore. They no longer have confidence in one another and they suspect each other. One can only trust in the security of one’s own thoughts. If, out of good intentions, you say the least thing to others, you can be sure that the police will hear of it, and that they will know the date and time at which you pronounced these words. Here indeed is a persecution without precedent. If one day it is recounted in the history of the church, Christians of the future will have difficulty believing it.18 175

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The Loyal Church Fights for Survival The CCP was simply following the inexorable logic of state power. Catholics, for their part, were experiencing a “persecution without precedent.” In this increasingly divided and confused situation, loyal Catholics were using the “weapons of the weak.” In the face of overwhelming state pressure, they were groping for any weapon that might assure the survival of the church. The March 1956 party document—although very much refracted through the CCP worldview—contained much truth. Catholics were indeed using “secret and public, legal and illegal” methods to struggle against the regime and its religious policy. Skirmishes continued throughout 1956 and 1957. Loyal Catholics proceeded on several fronts. The fi rst front concerned the new “acting” bishop. Most Catholics refused to recognize this “puppet.” He was willing to be used, but he was hardly a figure around whom Catholics would rally. In fact, Zhang himself soon seemed less willing to usurp Kung’s place completely. Sometime by early 1957, he is reported to have said, “The true Bishop of Shanghai is in prison and I am merely his replacement for administration.”19 It would appear that Zhang Shiliang himself never fully met CCP expectations. The parishes formed the second front. In early 1956, the pastors of St. Theresa’s and Our Lady of Peace publicly refused to say Mass for the time being. 20 They would resume saying Mass only when Bishop Kung was released from jail and gave them the order to continue. In addition, some Catholics avoided the parishes altogether. They said their prayers at home or in private. The third front concerned the clergy. Many Catholics rallied around the remaining loyal priests and avoided those who had been compromised. They attended Masses given by the “loyal” priests and went to them for confession. At some parishes there were long lines outside the confessional box of a “loyal” priest and short lines outside that of a “compromised” priest. In this regard, the priest’s declaration had worked to the advantage of “loyal” Catholics, for now the laity could see—in black and white—the courageous few that still rallied around Bishop Kung. One such priest was the Jesuit Peter Guo Xuejing. The best explanation as to why he was not yet in jail was simple: he was a war hero. Guo was originally from northern China, where he had fought against the Japanese. Even so, Guo, and other faithful priests, were under surveillance in the Xujiahui Jesuit residence. To escape detection, Guo said Mass for 176

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loyal Catholics very early in the morning. He also heard their confessions in public parks. Some would later mark these events as the beginning of Shanghai’s underground church.21 In fact, with the establishment of the clandestine novitiates and the talk of a “completely clandestine” bishop, parts of the church had already begun to submerge even years before. An elderly Jesuit, Joseph Song Zhizhen, made an equally bold move. Sometime in early 1956, he publicly retracted his name from the declaration.22 He made penance and begged pardon. Forty other priests followed suit. The usefulness of the declaration was being undermined. In response, the regime blacklisted these priests, but loyal Catholics delighted in the news. By the spring of 1956, the church had some good fortune. Mao inaugurated the Hundred Flowers campaign. “Let one hundred flowers bloom” was the watchword, and a brief period of relaxation was ushered in nationwide. During this time, some young Catholics—perhaps many—were released from prison after making some kind of confession. They were often let go with the understanding that they were now government informers. For example, Mary Qian, a former member of the underground convent, was released in July; she was expected to occasionally attend Mass at Christ the King, then report back to PSB agents.23 She met several other members of the underground convent at Christ the King. She would later come to believe that it was not a chance encounter. All of them were now spying on the church and on each other as well. In fact, Home, the underground convent, remained under government scrutiny long past 1956. 24 Eight Jesuits were released between July and September 1956. The most notable was Catholic Shanghai’s favorite preacher, Francis X. Cai Shifang, who had completed his three-year sentence. He emboldened Catholics and, for some, was like a second St. Francis Xavier— the great sixteenth-century Jesuit missionary to the East—returned to earth.25 With either boldness or bravado or a combination of the two, Cai mentioned a name that many Catholics had feared saying in public. On October 7, 1956, he preached—from the pulpit—that it was the anniversary of Bishop Kung’s consecration, and asked “all the Catholics to pray for him and for his release” from prison.26 The following Sunday, Cai told his parishioners that they could not join the Patriotic Association or read its news bulletin, the Courier Dove.27 In fact, Cai reminded them that anyone who joined the Patriotic Association would be excommunicated. Fear, then, was a powerful motivator in the Shanghai Catholic community. Catholics knew Jesus 177

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had asked, “What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?” Could joining the Patriotic Association possibly mean losing one’s eternal soul? This question strengthened the resolve of some Catholics and tortured the consciences of others. It was true that many self-proclaimed “patriotic” Catholics had previously been barred from receiving communion. But there is a difference between being barred from communion and a formal excommunication. (In fact, many Shanghai Catholics believed they would be excommunicated if they joined the Patriotic Association. Even so, there is little public evidence that such formal excommunications took place. They could have taken place, but, if they did, they would certainly have entailed a rigorist reading of church law.) Although it seems Rome never clarified this thorny issue, it did make public other extraordinary steps, for on March 1, 1957, the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith strengthened the hand of the loyal priests. 28 It issued a document that stated the legitimate bishop was imprisoned and the current leader of the diocese was “illegitimately assigned.” Therefore, in all the areas under Kung’s governance—not only Shanghai, but in the Diocese of Suzhou and the Archdiocese of Nanjing as well—if it was unclear who the “legitimate pastor” of an area was, any priest “in communion with Rome” could now “exercise the office of pastor.” He could also grant the special dispensations—usually marriage dispensations—normally reserved to the bishop alone. 29 These priests could also continue to hear confessions in these areas as well. Giving priests special permission to administer the sacraments with little episcopal oversight was an extraordinary move. But then again, these were extraordinary times. Rome was concerned, not only about legitimate leadership, but also about the pastoral care of the faithful, a task that now fell heavily on the shoulders of the remaining “free” priests. Even if the bishop was replaced by one “illegitimately assigned,” the pastoral care of the flock would continue with at least a semblance of normalcy. The “patriotic” church in Shanghai was also duly notified—by way of letter—of Rome’s decision. In fact, taken together, all these directives and decisions gave a canonical basis for the existence of an underground church. Functioning clandestinely was becoming normal for the church. It now also had Rome’s blessing. The fourth front was the seminary, “the seed-bed” by defi nition, where the future clergy was trained. One account describes the following situation. After September 8, about half the 280 seminarians were—at 178

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least for a time—put in prison. The rest were now under house arrest and had to go through intensive antireligious indoctrination sessions. Thus, the seminary became like a prison in which seminarians were pressured to speak out against the bishop. The cadres would display their guns, pound on the tables, and scream and yell. In this climate of fear, some seminarians became mentally unstable and cried out for the intervention of the saints and martyrs: intercedite pro nobis (intercede for us). In time, many seminarians were sent home, and others eventually abandoned their vocation. For some, marriage seemed a more attractive option. The end result: soon only about sixty seminarians were left. Many of them rallied around the intrepid Francis X. Cai Shifang.30 The CCP took note of the 1956 Catholic counterattack. A Shanghai RAB “top secret” document—dated December 10, 1956—states that the “patriotic strength in the church has achieved supremacy.”31 Even so, the “basic task” of changing the church “from the tool of imperialist invasion to a self-administered church” remained.32 Vatican influence in the Shanghai Catholic Church—it would appear—still remained strong: [T]he Vatican controls the Chinese Catholic Church and influences the Chinese Catholic Church in politics, administration, and personnel. In reality, it gets involved in our internal affairs and offends our national sovereignty. This is what an independent new China can never tolerate. Therefore, freeing the Chinese Catholic Church from Vatican control is the fundamental issue in realizing the self-administered Chinese Catholic Church.33 The document is titled “Essential Points for the 1957 Catholic Work Plan.” In fact, the RAB had major plans for all religious groups active in Shanghai at that time.34 However, some of the most detailed plans for “religious work” in Shanghai concerned the Catholic Church. As such, the “Catholic Work Plan” proposes the following five points. First, only government-approved clergy will control the church. In fact, it notes that in some dioceses, even the bishop, or acting bishop, is already secretly controlled by the party: “We will not reveal their identity so we can use them on both sides.”35 In other words, those bishops who had retained their Vatican approval could now be used to deceive the Vatican. The CCP was proving expert in penetrating church governance. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, others would counter. Second, the document states the party must consolidate its position in the church. Third, the clergy must continue to be “educated,” to build a 179

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Chinese Catholic Church. Fourth, the party must take important administrative steps to manage the church. For example, it would have to take care of the newly acquired real estate and reorganize the remaining seminaries throughout the country. These seminaries would only be directed by “patriotic clergy.” Finally, the “Catholic patriotic organization” must uncover “rumors” made by the Vatican. At the same time, the “patriotic” church should strive to develop friendly relations with Catholic nations throughout the world, including those in Latin America, and show them that religious freedom exists in China. In short, the document reveals the government blueprint for a puppet church: Catholic in most externals, but not in essence. This shell of a church would present a friendly exterior to the outside world. But it was a façade, for this church was now strictly controlled by the CCP.

The Last Remaining Foreign Missionaries and Brainwashing We cannot overlook the fact that the most loyal core of the church was at this time languishing in prisons and labor camps. It included the remaining foreign missionaries. By 1956, of the Americans, only Bishop Walsh was still “free.” By then he had been moved out of the CCB and had taken up residence at Christ the King Parish. Barred from any pastoral work, he spent most of his days writing and drinking his diminishing supply of coffee. As we have seen, the remaining foreign priests—all American— were imprisoned by mid-1953. The four Jesuits were Thomas Phillips, John Clifford, John Houle, and Charles McCarthy (whose letters have provided so much rich detail in this account). Also imprisoned were the Maryknoll priest Joseph McCormack and procurator for the Franciscans Cyril Wagner. In addition, in 1955, two American Franciscans were transferred to Shanghai from their jail in Tianjin. The prisoners were initially subject to brutal interrogations and deprived of food and sleep. Clifford was treated the worst. After all, his brother was actually an FBI agent, which was not uncommon for patriotic, “law-and-order” Irish Americans in those days. The running joke of the time was that the CIA was staffed by members of the WASP elite and the FBI was comprised of ethnic Catholics. This was, at best, a dubious honor in a Communist country. Clifford was forced to stand in his own excrement, and he was repeatedly kicked in the face.36 In fact, during the brief period of relaxation in the spring of 1956, the CCP orchestrated a tour of the “new China” for the American priests. They 180

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were shown factories with model workers and taken to schools with singing children. The ever-principled Clifford, however, refused to take part in the “charade.” With the signing of the Geneva Convention, on September 11, 1955, the prisoners began receiving better treatment. It may also have been the reason why some of the last remaining missionaries—save the imprisoned Americans—were expelled from China in late September.37 This small group of missionaries was from neutral countries, or countries friendly to Communist China, including Spain, Belgium, and Hungary. Despite the Geneva Convention, the Americans remained in captivity. For sure, America was still enemy number one for backing South Korea and Taiwan. One commentator offers other reasons why these Americans priests were not immediately expelled: the CCP never questioned their dedication and training.38 Therefore, if the party “could ‘clean’ a foreign Jesuit’s mind, especially the mind of an American Jesuit, a representative of both the most powerful nation on earth, and the most powerful religious denomination on earth, the Roman Catholic Church, then the C.C.P. would have proof of its power.”39 Phillips and Clifford were fi nally released in mid-June 1956; Houle and McCarthy exactly one year later. But their years in prison and the unrelenting “brainwashing” had taken a toll. Nearly all of them had made some sort of confession. One wrote a letter home stating that he had violated the laws of the “People’s Government,” and at least one produced a tape-recorded “confession.” Some of these missionaries would later counter that these confessions were doctored. Apparently, their responses were cut and spliced with different questions in order to produce a more damaging confession. Charles McCarthy, superior of the Jesuit School of Theology, was also forced to make a confession. His letters were now cited as evidence against him. The regime reported his confession as follows: From the fall of 1947 to June 1953, I worked as an anti-China spy. Before the liberation, I conducted intelligence work related to the Chinese military, economy, politics, and society, and sent it abroad. I reported the location of the newly constructed airports in the liberated areas to officers in the US consulate in Beijing. I also offered them detailed intelligence concerning the economy in central Hebei. After the liberation, I reported on the life and property damage caused by aerial bombardment, the location of 181

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military hospitals of the Liberation Army, the location of the air defense bases that protected Shanghai, and the situation of the various movements carried out by the government. I usually used slang and code to send out this intelligence.40 (The preceding confession is not a facsimile of an original document in the author’s own handwriting. Further, I have read many of McCarthy’s extant letters from this period. Although these letters were certainly rich in detail, not once do they reveal sensitive military information. McCarthy’s confession, it seems, was coerced.) Upon release, these missionaries evidenced signs of trauma. At a Hong Kong press conference given a few days after the missionaries’ release, one reporter noticed that McCarthy kept clasping and unclasping his hands. A photograph of the same conference shows—in place of the once ruddy-faced McCarthy—an ashen-faced man. Only Clifford, who later wrote In the Presence of My Enemies, a memoir of his imprisonment, certainly signed nothing. In fact—much to the consternation of his captors, and with his transport out of the country waiting—Clifford resolutely refused to sign even his release papers, so deep was his hatred of the Chinese Communist Party. A note is necessary here on the role played by “thought reform” (sixiang gaizao), or ideological remolding. In common parlance, it is referred to as “brainwashing,” a term coined in the early 1950s by the American journalist Edward Hunter, who based it on a literal translation of the Chinese xinao (to wash the brain).41 In his classic study, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: the Study of Brainwashing in China, Robert Lifton says that thought reform has in fact emerged as one of the most powerful efforts at human manipulation ever undertaken. To be sure, such a program is by no means completely new: imposed dogmas, inquisitions, and mass conversion movements have existed in every country and during every historical epoch. But the Chinese Communists have brought to theirs a more organized, comprehensive, and deliberate—a more total—character, as well as a unique blend of energetic and ingenious psychological techniques.42 Regarding the “total character” of thought reform, Lifton says there are two components: “confession, the exposure and renunciation of past and present ‘evil’; and re-education, the remaking of a man in the 182

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Communist image. These elements are closely related and overlapping, since they both bring into play a series of pressures and appeals—intellectual, emotional, and physical—aimed at social control and individual change.”43 Although brainwashing seems to connote an individual process, the whole thought-reform process was often brought to bear on entire groups. Yet the result was the same: the remaking of people’s thoughts and the elimination of recalcitrants. To prevent thought reform and the concomitant accusation meetings from seeming too theoretical, the witness of a victim is necessary. According to the same Jesuit named above, John Clifford, “[t]he indispensable starting point for brainwashing is the immediate attempt to dehumanize the captive.”44 Another commentator states that “[u]sually these techniques involved some type of physical abuse, intense psychological abuse, especially through interruption of the normal sleep cycle, and relentless interrogation and ideological indoctrination.”45 Yet the CCP saw it differently, as Lifton emphasizes: “[W]hat we see as a set of coercive maneuvers, the Chinese Communists view as a morally uplifting, harmonizing, and scientifically therapeutic experience.”46

Formation of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association By 1957, of the five recognized religions in China, only the Catholic Church did not yet have a fully formed Patriotic Association that answered directly to the Cabinet level Religious Affairs Bureau in Beijing. Thus, statutes that would formally establish the CCPA were required. To this end, preliminary meetings were held in the capital from January 24 to February 8, 1956, and again on July 26 of the same year, some of which even Prime Minister Zhou Enlai attended. Follow-up meetings were also held in Beijing from February 12 to 16, 1957.47 The Courier Dove, organ of the Shanghai CCPA, reported on the meetings. (They were not mentioned in the mainstream Chinese press.) At this conference, the priests Zhang Shiliang, Zhang Jiashu, and Li Side and the laymen Hu Wenyao and Yang Shida represented Shanghai.48 Upon returning to the city, these men, along with six other “patriotic” priests and about thirty laity, among them Lu Weidu and Li Wenzhi, made the results of the meeting known.49 Then, from June 17 to August 2, 1957, 241 Catholic delegates met with Zhou Enlai and important officials from the RAB and UFWD. Twelve “bishops” and seventy priests attended. Shanghai alone sent six 183

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priests. Press accounts originally announced that the meeting would be over within a week.50 Yet the meeting dragged on indefinitely. What was going on? In short, ever since June 1957—when the Hundred Flowers campaign was over—the regime had taken a radical turn to the left. The political atmosphere quickly grew more oppressive. Now the AntiRightist campaign violently targeted those so bold as to have previously spoken out against the government during the period of relaxation. (The regime had seen what happened during a similar reprieve in Hungary. The 1956 uprising in that country would not be repeated in China.) The government was now in no mood to compromise, and it was out of this tense climate that the CCPA was born. The CCPA would answer—as did all “official” religious associations in China—directly to Beijing. According to one commentator, it was during this earlier period of relaxation that some Shanghai Catholics called for Kung’s release and asked the government that he be allowed to freely govern his diocese once again. Perhaps they wanted to see proof of the government’s good intent. Now even these somewhat more conciliatory Catholics were targeted as “rightists.” They were now named after one of their number who had spoken up in Kung’s defense, and thus were labeled members of the “Zhu Kungjia Rightist Clique.”51 Li Weiguang, vicar general of Nanjing and author of the 1953 Nanjing Manifesto, became the de facto leader of the CCPA. He was fi rmly in the back pocket of the regime, having long ago proved his loyalty. Church law holds that any priest who allows himself to be consecrated a bishop without Vatican approval automatically incurs excommunication on himself. Li’s case went a step further, for he was formally excommunicated by name—one of the only Chinese bishops, if not the only one in this history, to publicly suffer such a fate. At least one account holds that it was Bishop Kung himself who hand-delivered the Vatican’s letter of excommunication to Li in person in October 1954. The regime wanted more than some church leaders such as Li under its control; it also wanted a clear break with Rome. Given the intense political climate, the CCPA was under a great deal of pressure to sever links with Rome and to establish a parallel church. Despite the pressure, some CCPA Catholics were still reluctant to make a formal break. They stalled. By December 1957, the CCP had grown frustrated. It forced the CCPA to take concrete action. And so, by 1958—appealing to the fact that many dioceses were without bishops—the CCPA began to illicitly consecrate new bishops. It was a bold and desperate move. 184

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The once “indivisible” Catholic Church in China was moving toward full-fledged schism. The Vatican grew increasingly alarmed. The events looked uncannily similar to Henry VIII’s break with Rome. In response, Pope Pius XII wrote “Ad Apostolorum Principis,” his third letter to the church in China. He denounced the CCPA by name and stated that the “consecration of unauthorized bishops is criminal and sacrilegious.”52 The reason: “Only Rome has the authority to consecrate bishops.”53 The pope also called attention to the excommunications of those bishops who had already contravened canon law. Once again, there was a time lag. The decree itself was dated June 29, 1958, the day the church honors St. Peter and St. Paul, but news of its release was withheld for another two months. The Vatican wanted to be certain that copies had first arrived safely in China before publicly revealing the existence of the letter. Nevertheless, illegitimate consecrations multiplied throughout China. Patriotic Associations complete with their own government-controlled bishops were defi nitively set up. A schism was in the making. Still, at least for the time being, Shanghai managed to hold out.

Socialist Education Movement Immediately after the National Patriotic Congress, the Shanghai RAB began to mobilize the Shanghai CCPA. Its first act was to force loyal Catholics to attend another battery of indoctrination sessions. These sessions were part of the nationwide Socialist Education Movement. (Although it was nationwide, there was a special content and purpose to the local sessions tailored specifically to Shanghai Catholics.) As such, these “ideological remolding” sessions were more thorough and systematic than any of the previous indoctrination campaigns. Many subjects called them “brainwashing.” “Patriotic” Catholics led the sessions. Not only had the “patriotics” broken with Rome, but to add insult to injury, they were forced to do the regime’s bidding, serving as the CCP’s wedge to divide the church from the inside. For this dubious distinction, some loyal Catholics considered these “patriotics” worse than the Communists. One of the CCPA cadres active in the Socialist Education Movement was Mary Yang Yuzhen.54 Her fascinating story gives an insider’s account of how the CCP used “repentant youth” to carry out these indoctrination sessions.55 Mary Yang had originally been a stalwart Legionary and had refused to register with the government years before. For this, she had 185

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been barred from attending university. In the intervening years, she was devoted to parish work. Because of her commitment, she was arrested on September 8, 1955. Nearly two weeks later, she cracked and signed a statement that the Legion was reactionary. The “repentant youth” then became a CCPA activist. Her story would only come to light once she arrived in Hong Kong in 1959. Here is what she related. From June 1956 to March 1957, she went to Zhangjiagou (near the Great Wall) for an intensive series of indoctrination classes. She was then named the section chief for the “patriotic” Catholic youth of Shanghai’s Huangpu District. In her work, other former members of the Catholic Youth, including the ubiquitous Li Wenzhi, also joined her. This group helped to organize a series of indoctrination classes for the Catholic laity. The fi rst session ran from August 6 to August 30, 1957. The daily schedule called for a 6:30 a.m. wake-up call followed by a full ten hours of indoctrination. The main topic for the August session was the Vatican. This session was meant only for the section chiefs and activists of each district, totaling one hundred people. Once these “patriotic” Catholic youth were properly trained, they could indoctrinate the rest of the Catholics. This took place in the second session, which lasted from December 11, 1957, to May 15, 1958. It indoctrinated four hundred university and high school students. The third session went from May 25 to September 27, 1958, and targeted more than four hundred medical workers and seminarians. Eight hundred people attended the fourth session from October 20, 1958, to January 7, 1959. The fi fth session lasted from January 22 to the end of February 1959 and addressed more than two hundred people. What took place at a typical indoctrination session? An attendee of the sessions at the Xujiahui seminary related the following. Some meetings were held in the chapel where “the altar and crucifix [were] concealed by a curtain on which [hung] a portrait of Mao.” The walls were also covered with Communist slogans. Indoctrination was supplemented with “cinema projections, sacrilegious plays and also a four-hour guided tour of an anti-religious exposition.” At fi rst, the atmosphere was even pleasant “with all kinds of attention” given to the attendees, especially at the beginning. Attendees were even asked if they had any criticisms of the regime. Then the tone changed, and the cadres tried to prove to the Catholics that the “consecration of Chinese bishops without the Holy Father’s authority [was] perfectly legitimate!”56 186

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These sessions had five distinct parts: speaking out, argumentation, discussion groups, struggle sessions, and a fi nal large gathering.57 In the fi nal session, the participants had to decide whether they would admit their crimes. If they admitted their crimes, the session ended “in a holiday atmosphere” with relatives present, where “photographs [were] taken and speeches [were] delivered and all return[ed] to their homes.”58 “Recalcitrants” suffered a worse fate. First, they were “accused, beaten and spat upon.”59 Later they were arrested and deported. Other sessions were held at the district level on special “grounds,” or in local police stations. There were special sessions for Catholic religious personnel as well. Three hundred nuns were concentrated at the Xujiahui seminary from June 1958 until April 1959. In addition, all remaining free priests (both from Shanghai and the neighboring regions)—about eighty in all—were held in “quasi internment” at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral for more than a year of intensive indoctrination. At some sessions, people even spat on the priests. At the end of this long indoctrination session, the priests had to sign a document denouncing the church. The Socialist Education Movement was nothing if not thorough. In late 1959, the Liberation Daily reported that the entire clergy, three hundred sisters, four thousand Catholics, and more than one thousand youth had attended the indoctrination sessions.60 Indoctrination in the ways of the new China was complete. In the midst of the third indoctrination session, the Shanghai RAB produced a two-page document titled “Several Opinions Concerning How to Mobilize the Catholic Masses in Taking a Further Step in Launching the Anti-Imperialism Patriotic Struggle,” which candidly assessed that the movement was proceeding in all quarters and that the rightists had been isolated.61 The most difficult to control were the Jesuits, for they were “still struggling desperately,” even though they knew “that their power [was] gone.”62 The remaining objectives outlined in the document include the following: ruining the reputation of the Jesuits, the Vatican, and Kung Pinmei; continuing to divide and conquer the church; encouraging denunciations of those who refused to change; and weakening the influence of recalcitrants in the church. In addition, the document noted that the RAB should elect Zhang Jiashu and Zhang Shiliang as leaders in the Shanghai CCPA, create the statutes for the Shanghai CCPA, educate religious professionals, and decrease the number of resisters. Only in this way would the party “really be able to fi rmly control the church’s entire position.”63 187

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But the Jesuits were not the only ones to resist, for CCP documents mention that “a small remnant group of reactionary forces” resisted.64 Having “failed” the Socialist Education Movement in some way, this “small remnant” was arrested in September and October of 1958. This time the regime would not risk large-scale, high-profi le arrests. These groups of recalcitrants (the statistics of those arrested have never been publicized) would be apprehended in small numbers in their homes over the next several months. The 1955 arrests were noisy and overt. Those in 1958 were silent and covert. Here are some of their stories. Louis Shen, a former seminarian, had remained at home practicing his artwork because his unacceptable class status—he was part of the wealthy Shen clan—made it hard for him to attend school or obtain work.65 He was forced to attend one indoctrination session, but then, cringing at the violence, refused to return. The PSB came for him on September 30. Catherine Ho had been arrested on September 8, 1955, but was then released in the slightly more relaxed atmosphere of 1956. She initially attended the indoctrination sessions, but then was expelled for being a recalcitrant. She simply waited at home to be arrested again, which she was, also in September. They were the fallen soldier’s of the church militant. One of the most compelling stories of the “small remnant” comes from Margaret Chu, niece of Bishop Kung.66 After a time, she avoided the indoctrination sessions.67 The “patriotics” would then visit her at home, but Chu would simply ignore them by playing her piano until they left. She did, however, continue to attend her catechism group. As part of its apostolate, this group would copy by hand and disseminate sermons given by the semiunderground Jesuit Peter Guo Xuejing. Chu’s group was one of the last such remaining catechism groups in Shanghai that remained undetected. Or so she thought. For Margaret Chu—through a trusted confidant, a Carmelite nun—had been given the name of a prospective member. This new member began to attend the meetings. Chu recalls: “Several times she asked me to mail Father Koo’s (Guo’s) sermons to her friends. Like a fool, I did. The addresses were fake. The Public Security Officers— the secret police—intercepted them all.”68 It appears that the addresses she was given were to units of Shanghai’s vast security apparatus. On May 28, 1958, ten members of the Shanghai CCPA came to her house and dragged her to an indoctrination meeting. They demanded that she sign a document denouncing Bishop Kung, her own uncle. She would later relate that “I decided that I would rather die than leave God.”69 Three months later, on September 12, 1958, Margaret Chu 188

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was arrested. In prison she was presented with the “criminal” evidence against her: copies of Father Guo’s sermons in her own handwriting. While in prison, Chu suffered another indignity: I was particularly shocked when I learned that my spiritual director, Father Aloysius Jin [Louis Jin Luxian], cooperated with the communists. Father Jin was a very eloquent priest, the rector of Shanghai seminary, and had a great influence among the Catholics. Soon after he was arrested, he recorded a tape to persuade loyal Catholics to support the government. This tape was used to broadcast in many prisons. . . . That was indeed a great blow to the Shanghai diocese and to me personally. At a time when I needed spiritual support and consolation most, I was left entirely without any trusting priests.70 The regime’s “divide and destroy” strategy was paying off handsomely. The “small remnant” also included priests. In October 1958, Bishop Walsh was fi nally taken from house arrest and put in prison. By May 1959, when the indoctrination sessions were over, the CCP had arrested six more Jesuits. Some of these men had already completed their prison sentences or were already aged and infi rm: Francis X. Cai Shifang, Thaddeus Cai Liangjia, Joseph Lu Dayuan, Joseph Song Zhizhen, Ignatius Zhu Zuoshi, and Vincent Xu Zonghai. And it was a small remnant, for even with the second round of arrests, a sizeable enough portion of the 1,200 arrested in September 1955—mostly young students—were now out of prison. At least half or more of the seminarians still studying for the priesthood in 1955 suddenly “lost” their vocation over the next few years. Concrete numbers are hard to come by, but the number of Shanghai Catholics who would spend the next twenty or more years in the labor camps would, all told, number in the hundreds, perhaps the high hundreds at most. They were the remnant. They suffered the most for the community. The once robust church militant had now become like the prophet Jeremiah’s remnant. In May 1959, these arrests were also accompanied by another exhibition to showcase Catholic misdeeds in China. The “Report Requesting Instructions on How to Organize Believers to Visit the ‘Catholic Socialist Education Movement Exhibition’” gave point-by-point instructions on how to organize the exhibition.71 It reiterated the CCP propaganda against the church that had been fashionable since the early 1950s. The church was once again linked with the Japanese aggressors, the 189

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American imperialists, and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. The point of the exhibition was to warn Shanghai Catholics to “keep vigilant,” “walk the Socialist road,” and “struggle to realize an independent, selfgoverning, self administering Catholic Church!”72

Trial of the “Kung Pinmei Traitorous Counterrevolutionary Clique” By 1955, the Roman Catholic Church in Shanghai had been effectively dismantled. It had no properties and few free personnel. Over the next five years, as we have seen, there was an unrelenting barrage of indoctrination sessions and continued arrests to make sure the Roman Catholic Church in Shanghai was completely extirpated and that a new “patriotic” church took its place. In the rest of the country, the final proof of the regime’s intent was the consecration of illegitimate bishops. By the summer of 1959, twenty-six bishops had been illicitly consecrated throughout China.73 But Shanghai waited. By early 1960—having seen its efforts stalled for far too long—the party moved to definitively set up the Shanghai branch of the CCPA, the puppet church. And so, as the indictment was readied against him and his closest associates, Bishop Kung was approached one last time to lead the puppet church in Shanghai. Years later, Kung himself would recount that, just before his trial, “the chief prosecutor of Shanghai met him in prison and suggested to him that he could have his freedom in exchange for his complete severance of any relations with the pope, inclusive of spiritual relations.”74 He would accept this offer, or the court would judge him severely. Kung refused to abandon his faith, even for freedom. He could not turn his back on the universal church. In time, he would “ask whether it were not against the state Constitution and the practice of international conventions regarding religious freedom that the state compel its citizens to alter the basic and integral part of their religious doctrine?”75 According to one account, Kung even replied to the chief prosecutor, “I am a Roman Catholic Bishop. If I denounce the Holy Father, not only would I not be a Bishop, I would not even be a Catholic. You can cut off my head, but you can never take away my duties.”76 The trial was set for March 16, 1960, at the Shanghai Municipal Intermediate People’s Court. The council for the prosecution was the Shanghai City people’s procurator branch office. The presiding judge was Lou Jiating, and the two judicial officers were Jiang Min and Liu 190

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Bingzhi. The two jurymen were the “patriotic” Catholics Tang Lüdao and Lu Weidu. The secretary was Guo Chunhe. About five hundred people attended the trial, including CCPA members from both Shanghai and the neighboring regions. In addition to Bishop Kung, there were fourteen defendants—all members of the “Kung Pinmei traitorous counterrevolutionary clique.” Since Hou Zhizheng had already died in prison, the remaining were listed—by name and job most recently held—both in the indictment and verdict as follows:77 1. Kung Pinmei (alias Kung Tianjue), bishop of the Shanghai Diocese, and concurrently the bishop of the Suzhou Diocese. 2. Jin Luxian (alias Jin Luyi), deputy superior of the Society of Jesus in China, acting superior of the Society of Jesus in Shanghai, acting apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Haizhou, and superior of the Shanghai Xujiahui major seminary. 3. Chen Zhemin (alias Chen Wenzhong), secretary of the internuncio Riberi, and member of the CCB. 4. Zhang Xibin (alias Zhang Dengru and Ma Dian’an), consultor for the Shanghai Diocese, and parish priest at St. Theresa’s. 5. Zhu Shude, member of the Society of Jesus and parish priest at Christ the King. 6. Zhu Xuefan, coadjutor bishop for the Shanghai Diocese. 7. Zhu Hongsheng, member of the Society of Jesus and assistant pastor at Christ the King. 8. Chen Tianxiang (alias Chen Yuhui), member of the Society of Jesus, consultor for the Shanghai Jesuits, and concurrently secretary to the provincial. 9. Cai Zhongxian (alias Cai Shifang), member of the Society of Jesus, and minister at the Xujiahui major seminary. 10. Wang Rensheng, member of the Society of Jesus, consultor for the Shanghai Jesuits, and pastor at St. Peter’s. 11. Fu Hezhou, consultor for the Shanghai Diocese, concurrently director of the finance committee of the bishop’s council. 12. Chen Yuntang (alias Chen Di’e and Yu Shifu), member of the Society of Jesus and pastor at St. Peter’s. 13. Li Shiyu (alias Li Du), secretary general of the bishop’s council for the Diocese of Shanghai, and concurrently a consultor for the Shanghai Diocese. 191

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14. Liu Jize (alias Liu Yuchen), consultor for the Shanghai Diocese and concurrently dean for Tangmuqiao deanery in Chuansha County. Thus, Bishop Kung and thirteen Catholic priests were brought to trial over a two-day period from March 16 to 17. In fact, the word “trial” is a bit of a misnomer, for in the end, the content of the verdict departed very little from the indictment. The outcome—it would seem—had been determined when Kung refused to acquiesce. The “trial” was in fact a “show trial,” a “mass accusation” meeting in which the prosecution served as judge, jury, and, if need be, executioner. Outside of “a statement by the defendants and the defense of the advocate,”78 the cards were stacked against the defense. The court heard several witnesses testify. Francis X. Cai Shifang would remember a fellow Jesuit Lawrence Jiang Minsheng and also a young diocesan priest Shen Baozhi both level charges against him.79 In addition, there was the testimony of Shu Haiyun, a nun; Gu Pingsheng, a disgruntled parish employee; and Li Wenbao, a leading figure in the Shanghai CCPA. The court was also presented with the following material evidence: 126 Photostats of title deeds; 2,074 taels of “counterrevolutionary” gold; 439 US dollars; 23,023 Chinese dollars; 62 KMT flags; 6 rifles, 1,382 bullets; and two radio transmitters.80 Some of the evidence was indeed damaging. During their many months of investigations, the cadres had been able to fi nd compliant priests. They had also discovered that the nun Shu Haiyun had been locked up in an ecclesiastical prison. Jailing religious sisters in their own convent was hardly an enlightened practice, but at the time, the church had little other recourse in dealing with mentally unstable or dangerous personnel. The CCP had also discovered some disgruntled employees, hardly a surprising occurrence for any organization. What about the rifles and bullets? We will return to that charge shortly. In any event, it would seem that the regime was still far from proving its case that the Kung “clique” was treasonously trying to overthrow the government. The real crime seemed to be what it had been all along: refusing to submit the church to complete government control. A Xinhua News Agency dispatch of March 17, the day of the sentencing, drew heavily from the indictment and verdict, both of which, in turn, relied heavily on the material produced by the Shanghai Propaganda Department in the earlier campaigns against the church. (The 192

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article was also published the next day in the People’s Daily.) It fi rst listed the key criminals and their backers: Imperialist special agent Kung Pinmei, who has all along set himself fi rmly against Communism and the people, took up the post of Bishop of the Shanghai Diocese in August 1950, under a plan worked out by the US spy James Edward Walsh, secretary general of the reactionary organization of the “Catholic Central Bureau,” and Anthony Riberi, an imperialist element hidden in the Catholic Church in China, (formerly the “minister” of the Vatican to the Chiang Kai-shek bandit clique and [now] expelled from China), and with the approval of the Vatican. Then, under the personal instructions of US spy James Edward Walsh (US national, now under detention), the imperialist elements Anthony Riberi, Fernand Lacretelle (French national, former superior of the Society of Jesus in Shanghai), George Mary Anthony Germain (French national, former member of the Society of Jesus in Shanghai), [and] Kung Pinmei drew together Jin Luxian, who had undergone a long period of reactionary training, and had been sent back to Shanghai by the Vatican to help Kung Pinmei in carrying out traitorous activities, and . . . [the article then lists the remaining members of the group] to form the nucleus and set up a traitorous counterrevolutionary clique, and carried out a series of traitorous activities in an organized and planned way through the religious institutions under their control. James Edward Walsh, the veteran US imperialist spy who personally directed the Kung Pinmei traitorous counterrevolutionary clique, came to China in 1948 when the Chinese people’s revolution was approaching victory, and the Chiang Kai-shek reactionary rule was on the verge of total collapse. Dispatched by US imperialism and the Vatican, he came to China together with Cardinal Francis Spellman, US imperialist, to make counterrevolutionary “emergency” arrangements with a view to undermining the Chinese people’s revolutionary cause. Walsh was left in China as the secretary general of the “Catholic Central Bureau.” Being in direct control of this reactionary organization, he directed the counterrevolutionary elements hidden in the Catholic Church to carry out sabotage activities.81 The article then gave conclusive evidence of their misdeeds: 193

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Due to active support by US imperialism, the traitorous counterrevolutionary clique headed by Kung Pinmei, under the cloak of religion, persisted in their efforts to undermine the various political movements in the country and the implementation of State policies, laws and decrees. They persisted in their efforts to sabotage the anti-imperialist and patriotic movement of Catholics all over the country, persecuted patriotic Catholics, invented and circulated rumors, advocated aggressive war by US imperialism, undermined the peace movement, colluded with and offered shelter to imperialist spies, and collected restricted State information, harbored special agents and counterrevolutionaries, and worked to undermine the land reform movement and the movement to suppress counterrevolutionaries, set up secret counterrevolutionary organizations and trained special agents, incited young people to flee the country, secretly stored arms and ammunition, and maintained clandestine radio communications, coordinating their actions with US imperialist aggression, and the efforts by the Chiang Kai-shek gang to make a comeback. Their crimes were very serious, for example, they collected espionage information on the number, equipment, logistic support and anti-air raid measures of the Chinese people’s volunteers in Korea and on China’s national defense industry. This traitorous counterrevolutionary clique also actively helped the counterrevolutionary organization “the revolutionary party of national salvation,” to establish counterrevolutionary bases in the villages near Shanghai and plot armed uprising. Arms, ammunition, radio communication equipment, and reactionary flags of the Kuomintang hidden by these counterrevolutionaries in churches and schools under their control were found, when the ring was unearthed by the public security organization. In addition, this traitorous counterrevolutionary clique secretly set up prisons in the churches to persecute Catholics. The Catholic nun Shu Haiyun was shut up in a church prison for ten months.82 The verdict itself listed a litany of crimes for each member of the “clique.” Finally, toward the end of the eleven-page document, the formal verdict stated that the men were guilty of nothing less than “high treason” (yanzhong de panguo zuixing): The traitorous counter-revolutionary clique headed by the accused, Kung Pinmei, was an important tool of the imperialists 194

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for subversion against the people’s democratic regime of our country. Their collusion with the imperialists, and treason against the motherland under the cloak of religion, constituted serious crimes of high treason.83 The verdict then listed their sentences. Bishop Kung received a life sentence, and Jin Luxian an eighteen-year sentence. Chen Zhemin, Zhang Xibin, and Zhu Shude all received twenty years. The following were sentenced to fifteen years: Zhu Hongsheng, Chen Tianxiang, Cai Zhongxian (Cai Shifang), Wang Rensheng, and Fu Hezhou. Chen Yuntang received twelve years and Zhu Xuefan, ten. Li Shiyu and Liu Jize, who had “showed some repentance,” were each given five years. Three remarkable photographs taken by a Xinhua News Agency photographer reveal the moment the sentences were read. How they escaped destruction or loss in the course of China’s turbulent past is a mystery. The presiding judge—looking down at his sheaf of papers— mechanically reads the verdict. The court recorder is busy about her work. One judicial officer looks off into the distance. The two “patriotic” Catholic jurymen have different responses. Tang Lüdao stares blankly into the distance, while the “traitor” Lu Weidu, son of Lo Pahong (Lu Baihong), the Catholic philanthropist, appears to accept the verdict as a reasonable one. The members of the “traitorous counterrevolutionary clique,” those who had served their church so faithfully—and done so much to frustrate CCP religious policy over the years—are mostly stoic, looking forward resolutely. Yet the five or more years of imprisonment without sentence have taken their toll. All are pale and thin. Twenty-four hours later, also at the Shanghai Intermediate People’s Court, the last remaining foreign missionary in Shanghai, Bishop James E. Walsh, was brought separately to trial.84 He had no witnesses and no defense counsel. Walsh was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for being a “long-time US spy,” who “committed serious crimes in plotting to subvert the Chinese people’s democratic regime, and personally directing the traitorous counterrevolutionary clique headed by Kung Pin-mei in carrying out counter-revolutionary activities.”85 Walsh was not the only one to suffer. A close friend of his was Francis Zhu Yisheng, son of the Catholic industrialist Nicholas Zhu Zhiyao who died in 1955 at the age of 91. His son Francis, by contrast, would have a more bitter fate. Refusing to give up his friendship with the “imperialist” Walsh, he was arrested in 1960. Brought up in more privileged times, 195

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the shock must have dealt a heavy blow. He would die in prison the next year. Upon hearing of his father’s death, his son, now a Jesuit seminarian in the Philippines would later recount: “I never cried again.”86 Roderick MacFarquhar, for one, says the timing of the trial of the two bishops can best be explained in terms of international politics, for Beijing had been having “fruitless but nevertheless continuing ambassadorial talks with the United States,” and it was in this context that it needed to show both Moscow and the Third World that it was still serious about taking up the crusade against imperialism.87 Therefore, according to MacFarquhar, wanting to throw a “spanner in its own works,” Beijing decided “to make an anti-American gesture on the eve of its fi rst polemics against Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence policy.”88

Bishop Kung’s Letter of Appeal It would take nearly twenty years for Bishop Kung to personally answer the charges made against him in March 1960.89 In 1979, Kung wrote a “Letter of Appeal” to the government, and—nearly every year after that—continued writing such letters. He answered the three major charges leveled against him: leading a counterrevolutionary clique, contacting the imperialists, and betraying the motherland. Kung answered the charges one by one. First, apart from being a member of the Catholic Church, which was a legal organization in China, he had never belonged to any “clique.” He asked the government “to list the name, nature, constitution and members” of the clique. Further, of the priests named by the government, only five of them, as Shanghai diocesan priests, fell under his direct jurisdiction. Second, he denied contacting the imperialists, as he only became bishop after the imperialists had left China: “Neither did he meet them in person nor did he engage in any intrigues with them.” He asked the government for specifics: what imperialists did he contact? Third, he stated he could never “betray the motherland in which I was born and on whose soil I was brought up.”90 Then Kung answered some of the particular charges. The bishop’s residence harbored no radio station or store of fi rearms; in fact, “only a wooden rifle butt without a barrel, trigger or bullets had been found.”91 Again he asked for specifics: Where was this incriminating evidence? (And if Catholics did have such arms caches, how could they have escaped detection from the omniscient state for all those years? Further, if they 196

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existed, why were they never used?) Accusing the church of amassing arms and ammunition, it would seem, was an old propaganda trope, the basest form of calumny. Kung was accused of having subverted the Korean War, the Land Reform, and in fact, the CCP’s implementation of Socialism in general, its “mass line.” It is worth quoting at length from the rest of Beatrice Leung’s rendition of the “Letter of Appeal”: He admitted that he could shoulder part of the responsibility for the subversion but not the whole. He revealed that the adviser on Canon Law in the diocese, a French priest, Father Lacretelle . . . handed him on 27 April 1951 a memorandum evaluating the current political movements. He admitted that this Canon Law adviser and he himself should take joint responsibility for dissuading the youth from enlisting in the army to fight in the Korean War. The reason was that their Catholic faith would be at stake, since the army had to study the atheist Marxism-Leninism [sic]. He pointed out that in this memorandum the legal adviser only remarked that the Korean War was not a completely just war. . . . He argued that the court had wrongly twisted the statement from ‘not completely just’ to ‘completely not just’. That was an exaggeration, Gong [Kung] argued. He remarked that the legal adviser had already been expelled some years ago, so Gong found that, at this juncture, it was unjust for him to take sole responsibility for everything.92 The “Letter of Appeal” seems to reveal a more complex portrait of Kung than I have previously given. In fact, where appropriate, Kung seems to accuse himself of some culpability. This is something new. Several notes are in order. First, I am relying on Leung’s version of the letter. Second, Kung wrote the letter while still in prison. The painful knowledge of Lacretelle’s role, and the more than twenty years of his own imprisonment, had taken their toll. On the question of Land Reform, he admitted that seminars had been held among the clergy to discuss the land reform in the light of Catholic teaching. Although criticisms of the land distribution itself had been voiced in these seminars, it was not true that Rome and the Shanghai Catholic diocese tried to subvert the movement. Gong [Kung] argued that it was groundless to accuse the Shanghai Catholic diocese of subverting the land reform. In fact the 197

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Catholic diocese in Shanghai had demonstrated its co-operation in land re-distribution by handing over all its land to the government one year earlier. As far as the subversion of the general line of Socialism went, he admitted that in one of his pastoral letters he used the phrase ‘the line of the Heavenly kingdom’ without any intention of staging a confrontation with the Socialist general line of the government. . . . Then Gong [Kung] traced the treatment of the Catholic Church from the 1950s down to the Cultural Revolution and re-affi rmed his stand. He also revealed that in 1956 he thought that the government was really implementing a religious freedom policy when he came to know that the religious believers were being treated a little more gently than before. He thought that the hard line he had taken with the government was wrong. Therefore he showed his sincere repentance and his trust in the government by surrendering the mission foundation money left behind by the previous bishop, in the form of 1,830 taels of gold. But he recalled that in his wildest dreams he never thought that, after the government had been given this great amount of gold, it would in return demand of him to acknowledge that it was a subversive fund for counter-revolutionary activities. He refused to make this false statement. Unilaterally, the government then announced the fi nding of this ‘fund for counter-revolutionary activities’. In his Letter of Appeal, Gong made it plain that he felt that he had been greatly let down by the government. He demanded that the current government review his case.93

Triumph of the Shanghai Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association With Bishop Kung sentenced to life imprisonment, it was time to finally institute the puppet church. To this end, leading figures of the Shanghai CCPA such as the priests Louis Zhang Jiashu and Francis X. Zhang Shiliang, and the laymen Hu Wenyao and Yang Shida, traveled to Beijing for the Second National Congress of People’s Representatives. At the meeting, which was held from March 30 to April 10, 1960, they denounced Kung Pinmei and pledged to “unite under the direction” of the CCP.94 Then, two weeks later, from April 23 to 26, the Shanghai branch of the CCPA met. More than 683 Catholics attended, along with 172 198

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observers.95 Hu Wenyao was named chairman, and the four vice chairmen were Louis Zhang Jiashu, Yang Shida, Tang Lüdao, and Lu Weidu. Toward the end of the meeting, Zhang Jiashu was elected bishop of the Shanghai Diocese. He was then illicitly consecrated. Thus, the CCPA—after an eleven-year struggle—had its bishop. It is telling that even “bishop” Zhang Jiashu answered to his chairman, the layman, or “apostate,” Hu Wenyao. In fact, in the summer of that year, the new “bishop” told an Italian journalist that he was not in touch with Rome, nor was Rome in touch with him. Thus, due to strong resistance, Shanghai was unable to establish its local branch of the CCPA until May 6, 1960, fully three years after its national founding and nine years after it was envisioned. Rome decried the illicit consecration, which was creating a schism. George Germain, writing from Hong Kong, noted that Zhang had some excellent qualities but was also known for “weakness and timidity”; the years of indoctrination and terror probably made him lose his “mental equilibrium.”96 A document written to the UFWD of the Shanghai Municipal Committee then requested permission to definitively set up the organization of the new Shanghai Catholic Diocese.97 The document notes seventeen leading members of the Shanghai Diocese: eleven priests, five lay members, and one nun. Their political classifications are also given. Three are leftists (and so the most politically correct), two are center-left, nine are center-center, and three are center-right. The director of the diocese is “bishop” Zhang Jiashu, who merits a political classification of centercenter. He is, however, balanced by one of his vice directors, Tang Lüdao, who is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist. We last met him at the trial of Bishop Kung, where he earned his stripes for publicly opposing his bishop. Other important members were Lu Weidu, Hu Wenyao, Yang Zengnian, Yang Shida, and the priest Li Side. Thus, by mid-1960, the CCP had achieved its goals for the Catholic Church in Shanghai. The regime now had a puppet church that answered strictly to the party, the same party that paid its bills and managed its affairs. Roman Catholic leadership and organization had effectively been crushed. The state reigned supreme. As a result, Catholic life in Shanghai essentially ground to a halt. Bishop Kung had been sentenced to life imprisonment and his associates sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to twenty years. All foreign missionaries who had served in Shanghai had now been expelled, save Bishop Walsh, who was serving a life sentence. The church was decisively subjugated, the schools long ago nationalized, the churches 199

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controlled by the Patriotic Association, and the most active Catholics dispersed to prisons and labor camps. Catholics who were still “free” also suffered. The majority of Catholics avoided the parishes, which they felt were firmly controlled by the Shanghai CCPA. They did not want to be monitored by the police or labeled schismatics by fellow Catholics. “We thus arrive at the paradoxical situation that in China the non-frequentation of religious services is a mark of fidelity to the Church.”98 Further, as part of the national campaigns to increase production, priests and nuns were pressed into manual labor. Xujiahui became an industrial zone, and nuns were “led every morning to the small steel mills located nearby at the former residence of the Jesuit Fathers and forced to work at the furnaces along with an undisclosed number of priests.”99 In fact, family life, and civil society as a whole, yielded to the ever-increasing demands of the regime. Even in some urban areas, people lived in communes, took their meals in collective canteens, and were burdened by incessant political indoctrination meetings and ever-rising production quotas. Sunday became one more workday. Catholic resistance had indeed been definitively broken, but only through the most draconian measures possible: denying employment and educational possibilities; closing schools and churches; expelling missionaries; stripping finances; and resorting to brainwashing, banishment, and torture. What remained of the loyal church would now be called the church of silence. Pope John XXIII—at his consistory of December 15, 1959—even mentioned a “schism” in China: “It is with burning lips and anxious heart that we are forced to use that word.”100 A letter from a Shanghai Catholic stated laconically, “Satan commands here.”101 Life was harsher still for Catholics now languishing in China’s vast gulag. (In fact, the total number of Chinese in labor camps peaked in 1960 at nearly five hundred thousand.)102 Francis Xavier Cai Shifang sums up the bitter experiences of those years: Going to jail was the beginning of our suffering. There is an adage, “Give me freedom, or give me death.” The most painful thing that can happen to us is to lose hope, to lose control of our own destiny. For some young students, this meant that they could not continue their schooling at all, for all doors to professional and scientific training were shut. They could only be farmers and factory workers. Imprisonment deprived them of everything. They were not treated as human beings in the prisons. They could not dream of fi nding a loving spouse and raising an ideal family. 200

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Ten years, twenty years, years of hopelessness and desperation were truly difficult to endure. These youths constantly suffered from insomnia. This astonishing group of youngsters shouldered their cross because of their love for Jesus! Only their love of God enabled them to persist and persevere throughout the ordeal.103 Cai reflects on what happened to young Catholic women, especially those who had belonged to the Legion of Mary: As for the young women, marriage and family meant so much to them. Being in prison did not just mean the loss of their freedom, but also every hope of starting a family of their own. . . . Yes, if they would “wake up,” i.e., turn their backs on their faith, then they could be out of prison in no time and pursue their future. Some did just that, and later became core members of the puppet Church, the so-called “Patriotic Church.” Nevertheless, many chose to stay on course in their journey of faith. Recalling that today, it still terrifies me when appraising the difficult spiritual struggle they had to go through. I wonder at and they wondered also at the source of their will power and strength which enabled them to stay on in the detention centers, prisons, and labor camps. Many young women of faith had a vocation to stay celibate and to become a religious. The Church taught them that a sister who maintains her virginity and celibacy is the spiritual bride of Christ. They had never considered marriage, not even to Catholics. But, being locked up, isolated, and placed under solitary confi nement, the need to survive forced some of them to marry labor camp cadres and workers. There was this dubious honor at that time that male labor camp cadres and workers preferred to marry Catholics, if they were members of the Legion of Mary, then that would be even better and more ideal. Our Catholic young women enjoyed such a reputation for modesty and gracious deportment.104

How to Destroy the Church: The Li Weihan Document The CCP had fi nally learned how to destroy the Catholic Church. It was now time to export its lessons to friendly Communist regimes worldwide. In 1959, Li Weihan, national director of the UFWD, was bold enough to publish his blueprint and share it with the nascent Cuban Communist Party.105 Written after most of the key events in Shanghai had taken 201

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place, the document seems to recapitulate every lesson learned in the long struggle against the Shanghai Catholic community, making the content “Chinese rather than Cuban.”106 If there was any doubt about the CCP’s ultimate goals, the document answers them. It asserts that because it “is a reactionary organization, the source of counterrevolutionary activities,” it is necessary “to destroy the Catholic Church. This is the objective we aim to reach and it is for this that we struggle.”107 The CCP had articulated its goal: the destruction of the Catholic Church. But what about the means? Li cautions fellow Communists to proceed slowly as they only have limited resources, and up to the present, “it has been impossible to give an adequate education to the masses.” They are to avoid a “frontal attack.” Why? Because the church “will win sympathy from the masses and unify its counterrevolutionary activities.” It is imperative that church leaders not “pass for martyrs.”108 Instead, the cadres are to proceed “step by step” using “instruction, education and persuasion” in order to “substitute Marxist elements in place of religious ones.” Their objective is to slowly “replace a false awareness with a true one to the degree that the Catholics themselves will fi nally come to destroy their idols which they themselves have created, and they will do this knowingly and willingly.” Dividing the community from within would lead to “victory.”109 Li then outlines a program to create the government-controlled church. It proceeds in four major phases. The first phase is to divide the church between “the mass of believers” and the imperialist and antipatriotic elements. In this phase, the CCP would use “patriotic measures to weaken the church and to destroy its prestige.” To accomplish this, the regime will set up a bureau, which would be “in charge of religious matters and organizations.” Then it will create “patriotic associations” for each of the approved religions, which would “make their act of submission” to the government.110 Then the party will isolate “reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries” by exposing them as unpatriotic. The remaining Catholics will then endure a “psychological conflict,” as their loyalties will be split between the church and the government. In these cases, the party should not act with “undue haste,” and so alienate the masses. If the “bonds” between the masses and the church are tight, the party is to “affi rm” that it is “defending religious freedom,” which is a “step backward,” so it can then move forward with the step of ultimately destroying the church. The document then warns that only “party militants” must be in charge of 202

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these patriotic reform committees. As for the reactionaries, they should be judged as criminals and eliminated, thus creating a “purer” church. In fact, the CCP militants should guide the church leaders themselves in making these declarations. At this fi rst phase, only “purely spiritual” contacts with the Vatican would be permitted.111 The second phase is to attack the “bond existing between the Church and the Vatican,” meaning the bond between the local church and the universal church. At this point, the cadres should expect the clergy to react violently as “the very foundation and source of their authority is being attacked.” In this situation, the cadres will convince the masses that they can have their religion without the Vatican. Again, the “coexistence of religion and patriotism” should be reiterated, and “those who follow the Vatican’s orders should be cut off from the masses in order to open the way to establish an independent church.”112 The second phase can be considered complete, and the church proclaimed independent, only when recalcitrant church leaders are readily denounced. The best way to achieve this is the “simple and anonymous” method of fomenting denunciations against them. The cadres will also win over Catholics by showing historical examples where legal action was brought to bear against those who opposed the separation of the church from the Vatican. (Li Weihan is probably thinking of Elizabethan England.) This step will go a long way in proving—especially to the intellectuals—that the “break with the Vatican represents a step in advance and not a step backwards.” By proving that Catholics can have their religion without the Vatican, the reform committees will then request an independent church, which the government will then authorize. This step should prove simple enough, the document claims, as the link between the local church and the Vatican is only important to theologians. In practice, “the masses are only vaguely conscious of their bond with the Vatican.”113 Once the link between the church and the Vatican has been broken, the government can then proceed with the third phase of the program, in which it appoints its own “bishops.” These bishops would even brave the Vatican’s threats of excommunication. During this phase, church liturgy will not be touched, and the “mass of believers will be aware of only slight differences between the new church and the old one.” The result will be that “[t]he Vatican old guard will be more and more isolated,” so that any action the government takes against it “will appear to be more and more legal.” In addition, during this time, the party must appeal to “the rear guard of the clergy,” and make them understand that the government is 203

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concerned about religious freedom. Those who protest will be “classed among those who are opposed to the people and the government.” By this point, “the key positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy are in our hands and submitted to the People’s government,” the document notes.114 Once the church hierarchy has submitted to the regime and the independent church is created, the CCP would proceed with the fourth and fi nal phase of the program: “the progressive elimination of those liturgical elements incompatible with the existence of the People’s government.”115 In this way, then, the masses will be protected against all constraint and obligation to frequent the church, to practice their religion, or to organize associations or religious groups of any kind whatsoever. We know perfectly well that when the practice of religion will depend solely on the feeling of individual responsibility, then it will not be long before it will be slowly forgotten. New generations will take the place of the old, and religion will only be presented as an element of past history, worthy only of mention in the history books of the world Communist movement.116 Even by 1960, the strategy was working. Religious practice was slowly being forgotten. The true believers were languishing in prison and labor camps. The church had precious little visible leadership and visible organization. For all intents and purposes, gone were its schools and seminaries; gone too its churches and hospitals; gone its priests, sisters, and missionaries; and gone too its most dedicated laypeople. And what remained of Catholic belief? The following response gives an answer. It is from a Jesuit priest, Chen Tianxiang, whose last official position was secretary to the Jesuit provincial. Originally named Chen Yuhui, he seems to have chosen his honorary name after Wen Tianxiang, the famous Southern Song loyalist. Wen fought the Mongol invasion of China to the bitter end, long after it was clear that his was a lost cause. Even after his capture and three years in prison, he refused to serve Kublai Khan and his court. He would only be subdued by execution. As for Chen Tianxiang, his loyalty would be to his church and his resistance to the CCP. Chen was still in a labor camp as late as 1988. It was from there that he wrote the following: Unless one is Catholic, if not, it is impossible to understand the attitude of the absoluteness towards faith. The absoluteness of 204

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faith is something which is closely linked to the fi nal destiny of a Catholic. For this reason, when faced with a violation against the fundamental faith, the reaction is to preserve it “whatever it costs.” Catholic history, and what happened after the Liberation, also proved this fact. Physical annihilation is something insignificant, whereas to maintain life in Christ is something absolutely important.117 Thus, we end on two strikingly different notes. On the one hand, we end with a Catholic who says that even physical annihilation is insignificant when compared to the fi nal destiny of a Catholic, which is life in Christ. On the other hand, we end with a Communist who says that the fi nal destiny of religion is to be forgotten as an element of past history, only to be mentioned as a footnote in the history books of the world Communist movement.

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By 1960, the CCP had effectively subdued the Shanghai Catholic community, the church militant. By 1966, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, it would deal it the coup de grace. It was a brutal period. No public religious practice was permitted, and many remaining vestiges of religion were destroyed. Catholics who remained in Shanghai during this dark period buried their precious photographs and religious items from happier times. Red guards toppled the spires of St. Ignatius in Xujiahui and smashed its beautiful stained glass windows. St. Peter’s became an exhibition center; Christ the King, a warehouse; and much of the Xujiahui compound, a production site. Parish libraries were burned to the ground, but through valiant efforts, the Jesuit theological library at Xujiahui was miraculously saved. Many “patriotic” clergy and religious sisters—some of them now married— lived at Xujiahui and worked in an umbrella factory. Even they were humiliated and beaten. Red guards demanded that “Bishop” Louis Zhang Jiashu himself trample on a cross and yell “Down with God.”1 Testimonies differ as to whether he resisted or not. The sum result was astonishing: some estimate that up to five hundred thousand Christians died from persecution between 1950 and 1978, up to half of them during the Cultural Revolution alone.2 Eliminating old ideas, culture, customs, and habits became the watchword of the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution. 3 And the “four olds” were destroyed. All religions suffered: Buddhist statues were burned, Muslims were forced to eat pork, and Confucius’s gravesite was exhumed. The religious were not the only ones to suffer. In fact, Li Weihan himself, author of the blueprint for destroying the Catholic Church, was attacked for doing too much to accommodate religion. Other longtime party members were also attacked and ridiculed. “Revolution is 206

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like Saturn, it devours its own children,” the German dramatist Georg Büchner once wrote. The nation descended into chaos.

Time Warp By late 1978—the beginning of the reform period—the outside world reacted with great surprise that Christianity had not been obliterated in China. It had survived even the darkest days of the Cultural Revolution. In fact, as priests and many laypeople were released from the labor camps and rehabilitated, they began to reestablish the church in their home areas.4 Some churches in Shanghai were slowly returned to religious use. In those heady days, it seemed that—for the Catholic Church in China—a new day had dawned. And it was during those heady days that Michael Chu (Zhu Lide), a well-placed Jesuit working in Rome, made a seventy-day fact-finding mission to Hong Kong and China in late 1978 and early 1979. He also had a personal reason for visiting China. He had entered the Jesuits in Shanghai in 1940 and had not seen his family there since he had left in 1949. In fact, his older brother was Francis X. Zhu Shude, one of the members of the Jesuit leadership team. He had already been in prisons and labor camps for nearly twenty-five years. Even so, he was still not yet rehabilitated by the government. As strong willed as ever, Francis let it be known that he objected to his brother’s visit. Perhaps he thought it was ill advised to visit China while the church situation was still tense. It might give too much face to the Communist authorities. In fact, the elder Zhu, even if given the option, preferred to stay in his labor camp, his “state-run” monastery. It was better than the “living hell” of Shanghai where he would, in all probability, be forced to live with other priests who—he probably thought—had long ago sold their souls to the regime. During his long stay, Michael Chu learned the following additional information, which he included in a fi nal report in March 1979.5 Shanghai Catholics knew little of what had happened in the universal church in the intervening twenty plus years. They did not know that Vatican II had ushered in changes in the church. Two of the most tangible changes were that the liturgy was now rarely celebrated in Latin and that the church now took a less uncompromising stand with Communist regimes. The Vatican now seemed to prefer careful diplomacy. Chu’s report especially focused on the fate of Shanghai’s priests, both Jesuit and diocesan, including those sentenced as part of the “Kung 207

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Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique.” He reported that four priests had died during the Great Famine. The most well known was Louis Wang Rensheng, former pastor of St. Peter’s, who died at White Lake labor camp in Anhui in December 1960. He reportedly was giving his food away to some of the young laborers. His sacrifice called to mind the words of the prophet Jeremiah who said, “[L]ook, those consumed by hunger. Even the prophet and the priest forage in a land they know not” (Jer 14:18). Other witnesses would later confi rm that some priests died or were killed during the Cultural Revolution. Some disappeared. Even more surprisingly, many survived. In fact, although Shanghai Catholics died of hunger, exposure, fatigue, persecution, and mob violence, and although some Catholics in China were killed before 1947, it is amazing how few were publicly executed by the state.6 It appears that the state had others do its dirty work. The only state execution of a Shanghai Catholic that might be construed as being done in odium fidei (hatred of the faith) was that of Shen Duocai, a leader in the Legion of Mary. He was executed in 1963. The official reason given was that he had worked for the former Nationalist government. It seems that the post-1947 no-martyrs policy had an effect. Martyrdom has long had an exalted place in Christianity, and it was Tertullian who said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Yet some Catholics felt they were being denied the crown jewel of martyrdom. Their fate in the prisons and the labor camps seemed even worse: neglect and irrelevance. Michael Chu divided the survivors into several groups. At least one Jesuit had worked in a labor camp in Qinghai Province in China’s barren far west. Four Jesuits were in a labor camp in Jiangxi Province. Another eight priests were with Chu’s brother at White Lake. Yet another group of priests were in Shanghai. First was Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei. He was still serving his life sentence in Ward Road Jail. The tedium was occasionally broken by the arrival of a package from the International Red Cross. By 1979, it was reported that the regime was still trying to strike a deal with him: they would give him back his diocese if he would head the “independent” Catholic Church. Kung refused. Chu would later write in his report that as “long as there is still one priest, nun or [C]hristian in jail for [the] faith, he will stay in jail; he will be the last one to leave jail.”7 There was other news. A few sick and elderly priests had returned to their families in Shanghai on prison furlough. Other priests were living 208

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at the former sisters’ residence in Xujiahui. Some of these priests were active members of the Patriotic Association, some were married, and one of them was Louis Zhang Jiashu, the government appointed “bishop.” In time, Michael Chu’s report was supplemented with other information, for as more and more people were rehabilitated and released from the prisons and labor camps, many “loyal” Catholics, including those who had been religious personnel and former members of the Catholic Youth, tried to return to Shanghai. Others, if given the chance to emigrate, left China as swiftly as possible. Many would fi rst emigrate to Hong Kong and only later rejoin family in Taiwan, Canada, and the United States. For example, Francis X. Cai Shifang, the gifted orator, was fi nally released from labor camp and went to Flushing, New York, to minister to Chinese Catholics. George Wong was also freed from his life as a “farmer.” He spent his remaining years with family and fellow Jesuits in California. Michael Chu’s report explained many mysteries. However, the fate of the foreign missionaries, those who had long since departed China, was not mysterious. Some of them continued as they had in China and led active and fruitful apostolic lives. A few struggled with short-term problems such as a loss of purpose. Others had heavier burdens to bear: posttraumatic stress or alcoholism. In any event, these missionaries were now scattered all over the world. Some returned to their home countries, such as France, Spain, or the United States. Others went to far-flung missions in Africa and South America. Yet the majority continued to serve the overseas Chinese communities in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. For example, George Germain settled in Hong Kong in 1952 and continued his work as mission procurator, much as he had done in China. He was constantly surrounded by former students from Aurora University. The China mission remained his passion: he assisted refugees from China, he sent fi nancial assistance to China, and he advocated for the persecuted church in China. He was also the Fides news correspondent for China and, as such, reported on what little church news he could glean from China during those obscure years. Charles McCarthy, the former rector of the Jesuit School of Theology, returned to California for a time and then went to the Philippines to serve its Chinese community. John Clifford wrote a book about his years of imprisonment, offering suggestions on how to counteract brainwashing. It was quite tellingly entitled, In the Presence of My Enemies. He was later sent 209

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to Taiwan where he taught for years. John Havas, dynamic leader of the Catholic Youth, could not return to his native Hungary and would eventually be stationed in New York. Non-Jesuits, as well, had compelling stories. The Columban Aedan McGrath, national director of the Legion of Mary, continued directing Legion groups throughout Asia. He made every effort to visit former Legionaries in their new homes over the years. One of the most remarkable persons was Bishop James E. Walsh, the last remaining foreign missionary in Shanghai. It was not until 1970 that he was finally released from Ward Road Jail and thus able to return to the United States. The most enigmatic figure remained Fernand Lacretelle.8 After his release from prison in 1954, he went to a sanatorium in France to convalesce. He then waited for his next assignment, and in May 1957, the superior general of the Jesuits sent him to Vietnam. The general wanted to reestablish a Jesuit presence there after a 150-year hiatus. In this capacity, Lacretelle helped to refound the Jesuit Vietnam mission. For eighteen years he directed retreats, served as novice master, and assisted at the flagship Dalat seminary. With the Communist takeover in 1975, Lacretelle, and other foreign Jesuits, were expelled from Vietnam. He then spent the rest of his life in Taiwan, where he died at age eighty-seven. Lacretelle seems never to have fully come to terms with what happened to him in Shanghai. In his personnel file in France, there is a testament of sorts from his retreat notes.9 He seems to have signed off on this document, despite some interruptions, year after year, during his annual retreat. In the testament, he asks not to be abandoned to his own “weakness.” Rather, he asks to be given the grace of a zeal for souls. Even his obituary is silent about his confession to the Communist authorities. It is perhaps only his testament that gives us the most personal account of the soul of this tragic hero.

One Church or Two? The heady atmosphere ushered in by 1979 would not last. Already by 1981, the hopeful news had to be tempered. Some Shanghai priests released in 1979 were now—ostensibly for reanimating the “underground” church—arrested again. One of them was the Jesuit Vincent Zhu Hongsheng, who prophesied that Mary would appear at Sheshan.10 As a result, thousands flocked to the pilgrimage site in March of 1980. 210

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Our Lady of Sheshan still retained her “sacred power”; Zhu, for his part, was accused of spreading rumors.11 There was other difficult news for the community as well. Vatican overtures went unanswered.12 Catholics soon found that their old nemesis—the Patriotic Association—wanted to reassert authority over the church. Newly reopened churches and institutions had to “register” with the government and be administered by the CCPA. It was clear that priests—in fact, all Catholics—still had to submit to party control. Further, as before, “patriotic” bishops renounced the pope, holding to the fiction that they were somehow Catholics independent of the papacy. Books on Catholicism printed in China after 1979 continued to rehash the same old history of how Chinese Catholics had shed imperialism and joined together in forming a “patriotic” church.13 Lu Weidu, son of the Catholic industrialist Lo Pahong (Lu Baihong), emerged from the “nightmare” of the Cultural Revolution only to write an article denouncing the “crimes” of Bishop Kung once again.14 It was clear that in this reform era, there were going to be new freedoms, but full religious freedom was not going to be one of them.15 Yet no one could deny that there was now more religious freedom than in the labor camps or during the Cultural Revolution. The situation was as surreal and uncertain as it was during the 1950s. What do you do with limited religious freedom? Do you compromise in any way or not? Catholics were divided in their responses. For “patriotic” or “official” Catholics, the existence of available priests and open churches was enough. They would allow what seemed to be diplomatic niceties for others. The situation had changed for the better, they argued, and it was now possible to have at least some semblance of normal church life. Denounced as “schismatics,” these now “official” Catholics protested that they maintained a spiritual link with Rome. They were not part of a “patriotic” church, but Catholics who had submitted to party control in the guise of the CCPA. Yet the subtleties of a “newly improved” Patriotic Association were lost on many Catholics. How could Catholics allow themselves to be governed by those who had renounced Rome and submitted to the party? They, for their part, had never submitted to the CCPA, and surely, they would not do so now. What of the years endured in the labor camps? What of the blood of martyrs and the witness of confessors? Were they for nothing? For holding to its own point of view, the rapidly emerging “underground” or “unofficial” church, loyal to Rome, constantly ran 211

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the risk of harassment or worse. Yet it could not be denied that even the very existence of a feisty underground church was itself testament to some limited freedoms and to the decline of an omniscient security state. Thus, the same nasty divisions between Catholics rapidly resurfaced. Once again there was an “underground” church that had been faithful to Rome through brutal persecution, and a “patriotic” church that had submitted to the Chinese government. Or so it would seem, for the situation became more complex in the telling. And the foreign press repeatedly told the story that there were now two churches in China. Others argued that it was no longer helpful to speak of two churches, that it was better to speak instead of one church with an “official” and an “unofficial” face. The Patriotic Association, they argued, was simply an organization that had control over the “official” or “registered” church in China. The “underground” church, on the other hand, simply chose not to register with the government. Some went so far as to say that the split was purely political and not doctrinal.16 Such statements would come as a great surprise to many Catholics who suffered the consequences of this schism. Further, these statements ignore history. Catholics did not go to the labor camps for “political” reasons, but for the “doctrinal” reason of fidelity to the pope. Those who blithely state that the CCPA simply controls the “open” church conveniently forget the painful history of the 1950s. The members of the Patriotic Association did the bidding of the Communist Party. They harassed, betrayed, and denounced their fellow Catholics. For Catholics who suffered in the labor camps, Communist Party members were not half as bad as the “patriotics,” those former Catholics who had turned against them. For these Catholics, a “patriotic” Catholic is not simply an alternative way of being Catholic. Rather, it is equivalent to being called a traitor. “Loyal” Catholics now had proof of the regime’s intent. Even in the new environment, they argued, the government was resurrecting the CCPA from its ashes and placing it—once again—under the control of the notorious “patriotics”: Shen Baozhi, the married priest; and Li Wenzhi, former stalwart of the Catholic Youth. And these “patriotics,” in turn, submitted themselves to an atheistic regime. In short, “loyal” Catholics felt that those who compromised in any way with the Patriotic Association implicated themselves in a painful and distasteful history. Yet, whatever position one takes on whether the church is one or two, the fact remains that the Catholic Church in China is deeply divided. And a house divided against itself cannot stand. 212

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As the maxim goes, all politics is local. This is true for religious politics as well. Perhaps the current complexity of the Catholic Church in China can best be understood by returning to Shanghai.

A Tale of Two Bishops We return again to the past, to August 30, 1938, to be precise, when two young men entered the Shanghai Jesuit novitiate.17 One was Louis Jin Luxian. His classmate—two years his minor—was the twenty-year-old Joseph Fan Zhongliang. Their journeys—begun together—would over time radically diverge. Understand the divergent paths taken by these men, and you will understand the current predicament of the Catholic community in Shanghai, for the thorniest issue that faced the church after 1979 was still leadership. Who would lead the community? It was as vital a question now as it had been since the Shanghai Catholic community was founded in 1608. Let us trace the histories of these two men. The fi rst seventeen years of their journeys were similar: years of Jesuit formation and studies, followed by ordination and pastoral work. The major exception was that Jin did doctoral work in Rome, while Fan remained in Shanghai. By the early 1950s, Jin was superior of the Shanghai Diocesan seminary, while Fan directed the Probatorium, the entry-level seminary. With their arrests in 1955, their paths began to diverge. Under duress, Jin made a confession in which he accused Bishop Kung and his fellow Catholics. He urged Catholics to support the government. Fan, along with others, remained fi rm. Even so, both men eventually served long prison sentences. In 1979, as China began to awaken from the collective insanity of the Cultural Revolution, both priests were released from prison. (As a sign of the conflicting information that emerged from China during those years, a Jesuit catalog had once mistakenly printed Jin’s obituary.) China then entered the reform period. By 1979, St. Ignatius Church at Xujiahui had reopened. Yet the “official” church that survived was still controlled by the “patriotic” bishop Louis Zhang Jiashu, a man who had never reconciled with Rome. In fact, Zhang rose high in the CCPA, a national leader in the “patriotic” church. Despite his own maltreatment during the Cultural Revolution, he still followed party dictates. In 1982, at the inauguration of the new seminary at Sheshan, he stated that seminaries had previously been “manipulated by foreign forces and served 213

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the interests of colonialism.”18 But Zhang himself—after living through such traumatic times—was now in declining health. Newly reopened churches quickly devolved to “patriotic” priests. Thus, when many loyal priests returned to Shanghai after twenty or more years in the labor camps, they found themselves once again effectively shut out from their former churches and institutions. To meet the crushing pastoral needs of the flock, they simply celebrated Mass and heard confessions in their apartments. An “underground” church was rapidly reemerging. For such “crimes” these old priests were soon sent back to the labor camps. In this ever-complex situation, the question remained: who would lead the community? With “bishop” Zhang Jiashu in poor health and Bishop Ignatius Kung still serving a life sentence, Catholics were concerned. And so, in a great irony, once they had been released by the authorities, two former Jesuit novitiate classmates presented themselves as possible leaders. One was Louis Jin Luxian, the other Joseph Fan Zhongliang. Could either priest speak for a once-again unified Catholic community? Or did greater pressures mitigate against this possibility? For the issue of church leadership was not only a local matter. It now concerned the Vatican and the Chinese government as well. Seeing that an underground church was rapidly growing, the CCP began to make some moves. Therefore, by late 1984, the newly revived Shanghai CCPA—in order to stake its claim—nominated Jin and his associate Li Side as auxiliary bishops of Shanghai. Jin had the right of succession to the now-failing “bishop” Zhang Jiashu. One commentator maintains that Jin accepted being consecrated a bishop without the papal mandate because he felt the future of the church was in jeopardy; he was afraid the government might appoint an even more pro-Communist bishop.19 The Vatican was concerned as well. In fact, time would reveal that it had tacitly approved two observers to attend Jin’s illicit consecration as bishop. One of them was the current bishop of Hong Kong: John Tong.20 Even so, for “loyal” Shanghai Catholics, Jin had completely sold out. They said that his point of view was completely the opposite of what it had been thirty years before. Their worst fears continued to be confi rmed over the years, for even as late as his 2009 memoir, Jin took a dismissive tone and made some rather strong statements about his old associate, Bishop Kung. 21 Jin was shrewd. He maintained that there was no “patriotic” church in China. There was simply a CCPA, which regulated the open church. 214

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Jin insisted that he was part of this “open” church and not part of any “patriotic church.” Some found Jin disingenuous.22 How could he be elected and consecrated with the blessing of the Patriotic Association and not be a member of a “patriotic” church? For these “loyalists,” the Patriotic Association may have been new and improved, but it was— nonetheless—the same association as before. United front strategies were back in play. CCP goals remained the same. And what of Bishop Kung? He was still the legitimate bishop of Shanghai, faithful to Rome after nearly thirty years in Ward Road Jail. In 1985—some five months after Jin’s consecration as “patriotic” bishop—Kung himself was released on parole. The Communist press made much of his purported public apology before his release. Kung took up residence at Xujiahui. But it quickly became apparent that Jin was now in control, and the Patriotic Association now acted as Kung’s minder. Kung had no power, even in his own diocese. He was living in a gilded cage. But perhaps more paradoxical, some of the most diehard elements in the Catholic community were now actually hoping Kung would leave China after his release from prison in 1985. The fact was that Kung was beginning to make confused and cryptic statements. Was he making these statements of his own volition? Was the party putting words into his mouth? In either case, the fear was that Kung could all too easily play into the hands of the CCP. These diehard Catholic elements wanted to preserve intact the memory of Kung’s heroic resistance. They did not want it sullied in any way by the complexity of the new situation or by the powerful forces arrayed against an exhausted old bishop. In 1988 Kung was eighty-six—well past retirement age for Catholic bishops—and he urgently needed medical care. And so, in that year— the same year “bishop” Zhang Jiashu died—Kung’s nephew, Joseph Kung, was given permission to take his uncle to the United States. His nephew and other family members soon found out that, in 1979, Kung had secretly been made a cardinal by the newly elected Pope John Paul II. Therefore, a year after his arrival in the United States, Kung flew to Rome for the 1989 consistory of cardinals, in which John Paul himself publicly praised him for his fidelity. Kung received his red hat and was treated to an unprecedented eight-minute standing ovation by the crowd at St. Peter’s. He was now Ignatius Cardinal Kung Pinmei. China did not respond favorably. Even to this day, Kung has not been rehabilitated by the Chinese government. There is some irony in the fact 215

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that a man who had never before left—nor had any intention of leaving—his native country would die in Stamford, Connecticut, in March of 2000, at the age of ninety-eight. He is now buried at the Mission Cemetery in Santa Clara, California. Yet Kung continues to remain a sign of fidelity for Catholics worldwide. His cause for canonization has been advanced. Kung has been a shining light in this book. But his moves after 1988 have also been questioned. When he went overseas, he retracted any harmful statements that he may have made in China. He never did return to China, even briefly, which in itself was controversial. Some maintain that he was not barred from returning to China and that his return had been guaranteed for him. They say his return might have done a great deal to advance reconciliation in the Shanghai church. Yet he sought asylum and preferred to be a prophet outside of his native place. For this, he can be forgiven. He had already spent thirty years in a Chinese prison. One can understand why a man in his late eighties would not risk returning to such a fate. In fact, it is Jin himself—who once considered Kung a brother— who has some strong words for Kung. 23 He says Kung was a good and holy priest, but he also had a number of faults. He insinuates that in the 1950s, Kung’s uncompromising stance hurt the church. He gives a litany of Kung’s defects. He was from a landowning family, and he complained that the CCP took the land under his feet and the roof over his head. He was not a gifted administrator, having served—before being named bishop of Suzhou—only as the prefect of a middle school. He thus brings Kung’s qualifications into question. He says Kung was an obstinate man and showed little prudence in closely adhering to Pope Pius XII’s uncompromising stance toward Communism. He was not particularly popular with his clergy, and he rarely consulted with Sylvester Zhu Xuefan, his vicar general. He preferred instead to seek advice from the Jesuits Fernand Lacretelle and George Germain. Jin also faults Kung for not attending a function held by the mayor in 1951, on the October 1st National Day, which—as such—commemorated the second anniversary of the Communist victory. For these and other reasons, Jin accuses Kung of being 80 percent French and 20 percent Chinese. In all fairness, I must say these are among the harshest words for Kung that I have encountered in my years of research. Although they may contain a kernel of truth, they certainly contradict the almost universally 216

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glowing account of the “holy,” “principled,” and “transparent” Kung that I have heard from so many others. Further, I have heard some very harsh things said about Jin as well, as people have questioned his sincerity, his ability to keep confidences, and his foolishness at exposing himself so readily to blackmail. Jin is certainly bold enough to challenge the conventional wisdom. But what is his motive in doing so? We return now to Fan. He never compromised with the government, and thus he commanded the loyalty of the “underground” church. He was one of only a handful of Shanghai priests to emerge from the camps alive and in reasonably good health. Many of his confreres—also released from prison—flocked to him. He was thus the natural choice to become the “underground” bishop. He received Rome’s approval in 1985. The CCP soon discovered that Fan was now Shanghai’s “underground” bishop. It was furious. Fan, it feared, could be meeting the pastoral needs of Shanghai Catholics outside of government oversight. He was put under virtual house arrest, and a surveillance camera was placed in front of his apartment. The Public Security Bureau monitored his every move. In fact, when Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington DC went to Shanghai in 1999, the PSB took Fan to a hotel and then blocked the entrance. It is no wonder that, under such tight control, Fan’s ability to govern his diocese has been greatly circumscribed. He is hardly known outside of Shanghai, cannot leave China, and only rarely sees foreign visitors. He oversees no institutions.24 Jin’s fate has been quite different. Even Jin’s detractors call him “brilliant” and are forced to concede his impressive accomplishments. 25 He seems to have made all the right moves to rebuild the battered and wounded Shanghai Diocese. Through deft maneuvering, he has been able to reopen or construct over one hundred churches, far more “registered” Catholic churches than any other city in China. (Even Beijing has only a fraction of this number.) He has opened a publishing house and a retreat center, and he caters to the pastoral needs of Shanghai’s growing international community. Jin runs what is perhaps the best seminary in China, complete with a well-stocked theological library. He has sent some of his best seminarians abroad to study. With few vocations now coming from Shanghai itself, he has recruited seminarians and religious sisters from devout Catholic villages in China’s rural interior.26 Indeed, current statistics for the “official” church in Shanghai are remarkable: 140,000 Catholics, 70 priests, 80 sisters, 30 novices, 130 seminarians, and 110 churches.27 217

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In building such an impressive church infrastructure, Jin has relied on outside help. Groups such as the Jesuits, Maryknoll, and German charitable institutions have been only too willing to support Jin in rebuilding the diocese. They have bankrolled his press and retreat center, trained his seminarians, and stocked his seminary library. Interestingly enough, in his efforts to rebuild the diocese, Jin is not above admonishing his flock. He has publicly castigated them at times for their increasingly worldly and materialistic spirit. Since Jin suffered greatly for the church in the past, it is perhaps with a hint of nostalgia that he wonders what has happened to the religious fervor so apparent during the persecution. The young of today are not quite like the young of the past, he muses, and they seem too untested to defer either to the state or to the church. Despite Jin’s very real efforts to counteract his detractors, they continue to attack him. One of his fiercest critics was his old friend and fellow Jesuit Laszlo Ladany, a well-known China-watcher who was based for years in Hong Kong. Ladany, for one, felt that foreigners— “ignorant” of the subtlety of Communist united front tactics—were taking Jin’s “bait.”28 “They believed that friendship with the Patriotics and an offer of support might change the situation of the Catholics in China.”29 It is also telling that many Shanghai Jesuits at home and abroad, as well as other church leaders, keep their distance from Jin. There are reasons for their wariness, for over the years, Jin has gone on record with some incautious statements downplaying the importance of the pope. He has also publicly defended China’s birth control policy, something that would cause great consternation in the Vatican under normal circumstances. Jin—for his part—knows that he is disliked, even hated, in some quarters, especially in Shanghai’s underground church. And yet, ironically, it is he who ensures their protection—for given his contact with the authorities, who else but Jin could act as the protector of the underground church? Further, on the rarest of occasions, both Fan and Jin have met. There is almost no public acrimony between them. The acrimony, rather, festers between their followers. There is perhaps an explanation for Jin’s policies. The logic is simple; the execution is complex. It states that for all those years, Jin watched how the French Jesuits and other church leaders exercised ecclesiastical power in China. He scrutinized their close connection with the colonial authorities. He then asked himself: if the missionaries have such a 218

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cozy relationship with foreign governments, why deprive the Chinese of the same with their own government? What could be wrong in seeking legitimacy, protection, and even privilege from the state, whether Communist or not? Why constantly antagonize the government, when a more prudent policy might give the church the stability that it once had, and currently craved? In fact, Jin says about as much in his brief memoir. He says that in prison he reflected on the reasons why Lacretelle wanted Catholic resistance to continue even after he made his confession. Jin says he soon realized that “missionaries have their own background, they have their own position and viewpoint. The way they consider questions and the way we do is not the same. In [the face of] big questions, those questions of life and death, we must think for ourselves, not letting others pull us by the nose. We absolutely must not become anyone’s little pawns, their sacrificial objects.”30 Yet Jin is an intelligent man and must be well aware of the risk of replacing one master with another. Jin is a deft diplomat. He is charming and speaks fluent English, French, and Italian. He is thus able to court outside contacts. In 2007, he published a thick collection of his speeches.31 Both a glossy book titled The Catholic Church in Shanghai Today—published in 2000 by his own press—as well as a similar book published in 2010 show many photos of Jin visiting dignitaries over the years both in Shanghai and abroad, including Hans Küng, Desmond Tutu, Billy Graham, and Mother Teresa.32 Yet one searches in vain for a picture of Jin with the pope. And it is precisely this relationship with the pope that causes the most consternation. This leads us to the question of legitimacy, the legitimacy noted above in the frenzy for photo ops for which Jin seems to have a deep-seated need. The question of legitimacy arises because there are no formal diplomatic relations between the Vatican and China. Therefore, for the longest time, both China and the Vatican were at an impasse. If the CCPA unilaterally ordained a bishop, Rome threatened formal excommunication. On the other hand, if Beijing discovered that Rome had made an “underground” priest a bishop, then that bishop ran a high risk of being arrested. Therefore, Rome would often not make public the names of approved bishops. In fact, in some cases, Rome lost control of the process as, for many years, “underground” bishops had the right to consecrate new bishops with little Vatican oversight. In the Vatican yearbook—the Annuario Pontificio—a local bishop is listed for nearly every diocese of the world, except for dioceses in 219

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China, which are listed sede vacante: vacant see. Only the last legitimate bishop—always dating back to the 1950s—is listed for reference. It is a confusing situation because a basic principle of church law is that the faithful have a right to know who is their shepherd. Yet, for many years, Chinese Catholics were uncertain of this most basic fact. Should the Vatican and China ever establish relations, clearing up this confusion would be one of the first orders of business. Absent any formal relations between China and the Vatican, and in order to get around this impasse, Rome has cautiously let it be known that—over the years—it has reconciled with perhaps the great majority of “patriotic” bishops. For a long time, their names—for the above reasons—were a closely held secret. Jin is now almost certainly one of them. In a fascinating twist of history, and perhaps to acknowledge Jin’s many achievements and also to recognize the intractable nature of church/state politics in Shanghai, word was leaked that—somewhere along the way—Jin had been reconciled with Rome. Some think it happened quite recently. Others say there was some sort of reconciliation as early as the mid-1980s. As one would expect, this possibility caused joy in some quarters and pain in others. The word that Jin had been reconciled was confi rmed in the fall of 2005, when Jin was invited—as one of four bishops from mainland China—to Rome by Pope Benedict XVI to attend a synod of bishops. Yet, the Chinese authorities denied him permission to go. In fact, the CCP has continued to bar him from traveling to Rome. To be clear, whatever his true status, Jin is more than fi fteen years past retirement age. As is Fan. And both men are in precarious health. Further, more than thirty years have passed since China’s opening. Because of this, once again, Shanghai is now in desperate need of a young bishop. Rome has had to meet these new exigencies in a creative manner. Through oblique channels, it has let it be known that it would no longer allow the consecration of underground bishops. Further, hoping that formal relations with China were imminent, by 2001, the Vatican adopted yet a more creative strategy. In that year, a government-approved “official” bishop was consecrated in China with prior Roman approval. For its part, Beijing did not insist that the Vatican keep its approval a secret. Beijing and the Vatican seem, therefore, to have agreed on a candidate before he was consecrated a bishop. 220

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A New Bishop for a New Shanghai? In Shanghai, this new policy led to an interesting twist when—on June 28, 2005—Father Joseph Xing Wenzhi was ordained Shanghai’s auxiliary bishop at Xujiahui in St. Ignatius Cathedral. During the consecration, Xing publicly stated that he had Rome’s prior approval. (This would also most likely imply that the ordaining bishops, including Jin Luxian, were in communion with Rome as well.) Maryknoll magazine stated this made Xing “the fi rst bishop of Shanghai ordained with the approval of the Holy See and the Chinese government since the communist takeover in 1949.”33 (This is an accurate but odd statement. In fact, before 1949 it was not necessary to seek government approval to consecrate a bishop in China.) So is Xing a legitimate bishop? After his ordination, Rome did not deny Xing’s declaration that he had Rome’s approval. But Rome also did not confi rm it. The Chinese government did the same, neither affi rming nor denying. At one point, an RAB official said that China did not need Rome’s approval. But then this voice went silent. (In fact, a reliable source who has seen the Vatican document says that Fan is the bishop of Shanghai, Jin is his coadjutor bishop with right of succession, and Xing is the auxiliary bishop of Shanghai.) If Xing is indeed the legitimate bishop—ordained at just over forty years of age—he is one of the youngest bishops in the entire Catholic Church. Yet Xing has some liabilities, his age being only one of them. He lacks an advanced degree, and he is not a Shanghai native. Yet his major strength is that he is a spiritual man who has the support of his religious personnel. It would seem that—to adequately govern his diocese—Xing will need the moral magnetism of Kung, the brilliance of Jin, and the good will of Fan. The stakes are high, as are the expectations. By supporting Xing, Rome desperately wants to avoid a breach in the church. Beijing, on the other hand, wants Xing to keep his Catholic flock docile (and perhaps divided). Xing—for his part—has to deal with competing interests even within the Vatican and within the CCP. Neither of these organizations is as monolithic as it would appear. China craves international respect, but not at the expense of internal security. To this end, many CCP cadres fi nd religious groups to be a dangerous alternative locus of power. Yet others—even in the security apparatus—see religion as a possibly stabilizing factor in an increasingly rootless China. Rome 221

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also does not always speak with one voice. Some think it is a mistake to negotiate with Beijing without any strong assurances. They cannot bear the thought of “selling out” the underground church. Others feel the church’s position was too hard-line in the past. How can the Catholic Church in China exist without at least some rapprochement with the Chinese government? However, these are not the only challenges facing the young bishop. First, as an auxiliary bishop, there is no guarantee that Xing will stay on in Shanghai. He does not have the right of succession. Second, Shanghai is a complex and ever-changing place that would tax even the most gifted churchman, for Shanghai itself is returning to its former glory. A city of over seventeen million, its denizens are increasingly urbane, modern, and wealthy. Shanghai is also China’s capitalist showcase, a worldclass city with some of the tallest buildings, newest subway systems, and largest ports on earth. In 2010, it successfully hosted the World Expo. Further, an exhibition hall displays what the dazzling city will look like in 2020. Moreover, Shanghai now contends with the same issues of any major city: rampant consumerism and materialism, a declining birth rate, fi nancial enticements, urban redevelopment, a rising civil society, tourism, and commercialized vice. Xujiahui alone—ancestral home of Matteo Ricci’s famed convert Paul Xu Guangqi—witnesses to some of these contradictions. Because of land speculation, much of what the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s could not destroy, developers have. A massive new subway system has eaten away part of the old Jesuit residence. Brand new apartment buildings stand on what used to be church property. No fewer than six colossal department stores circle the central meridian. Luckily, the former Jesuit theological library has been restored—with city funds, no doubt.34 St. Ignatius Church, now the cathedral, is in its fi nal stage of restoration and stands attractive as ever. Yet its gates are often padlocked. Non-Catholic Chinese are often kept out, except for the briefest of visiting hours. A keen eye detects a “security” camera strategically placed high above, with a commanding view of the cathedral. In this rush to meet the challenges of this bustling metropolis, has the underground church been forgotten? Joseph Kung, nephew of Cardinal Kung, thinks so. It appears that “the Pope has de-facto recognized the official Patriotic Church, and is thereby nudging the underground (true) Church to merge with the official Patriotic (schismatic) Church under 222

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the glorified name of ‘unity.’ This is beyond the comprehension of many faithful, but this is what, I am afraid, is happening.”35 Kung even hints that a schism might come from an unlikely source. If Rome does not name bishops to the underground church, then “loyal” Catholics “under such pressure . . . might be compelled to do something in order to preserve their Catholic faith,” he says.36 The threat of a real schism—it would seem—still looms large. Many of the underground faithful are not so extreme. One can suffer as much from the church as for it, they argue. Despite their intense suffering, many faithful Catholics still earnestly seek only an apology from Jin and his collaborators. Even if China and the Vatican reach a rapprochement, it will take a long time to heal some wounds.

Recent Developments It was precisely for the sake of healing these wounds, and for fostering reconciliation, that in June 2007, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a letter to the bishops and faithful in China. It was a major breakthrough, the Vatican’s most important document addressed to the church in China in fifty years. The letter had a remarkably irenic tone and expressed a deep willingness to dialogue with the Chinese government. The pope was even prepared to reach an accord with the government on serious issues facing the church, including the choice of candidates for the episcopacy. He also tried to allay any fears that the Vatican somehow threatened China’s sovereignty. As a sign of good will, the pope explicitly mentioned something that had previously only been known in some circles, namely that the great majority of Chinese bishops had already reconciled with the Vatican. The Vatican also conceded that it is not normal for the church to function clandestinely. To this end, it revoked the special canonical privileges that allowed underground bishops to be named and an underground church to grow. In short, the letter hoped for a fresh start with the Chinese government.37 There were, however, some key nonnegotiable points. One key principle was the unity of the church. In this regard, the letter made an oblique reference to the CCPA and other state organs, which currently control Catholic life in China. Although the Vatican was willing to dialogue with the proper civil authorities, it saw no need for entities “desired by the State” but that were “extraneous to the structure of the Church.” These entities were extraneous, according to the pope, because they 223

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struck at the very nature of the church. “Communion and unity—let me repeat—are essential and integral elements of the Catholic Church: therefore the proposal for a Church that is ‘independent’ of the Holy See, in the religious sphere, is incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”38 The pope’s letter, while fi rm on key Catholic principles, was also clear in its desire to move beyond the impasse of the last fifty years. Perhaps the pope also trusted that China would become more open after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Since then, Beijing’s reception of the Vatican overture has been cool. In fact, CCP hard-liners still control the bureaus that monitor religious affairs. Until he was further promoted—in 2009—to a position with the rank of minister, Ye Xiaowen directed the State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA). During his tenure, he actively pursued underground religious groups, spoke out against the “colonial” aims of the Vatican, and tried to block the dissemination of the pope’s 2007 letter. His successor, Wang Zuo’an, seems to be cut of the same cloth. Liu Bainian, a long-time director of the CCPA, for his part, took his cues from these men. These officials have a stake in maintaining the status quo. Their political survival depends on it. They need to control religious groups no matter the cost. And they have been somewhat successful. Although they have not been able to completely control religious groups, they have—at least—been able to keep these groups divided and in opposition to themselves. In fact, the CCP is unlikely to grant such groups even limited autonomy in the near future, so insecure is it about its grip on the nation. 39 Thus, Catholic bishops in China remain under enormous pressure—both those who function publicly, and those who function underground—for the CCP continues to wield tremendous power over them. Bishops cannot travel to Rome. They cannot meet together on their own accord but only if called together by the party. Further, these meetings are heavily monitored by the authorities. In addition, at any time, the regime could unilaterally decide to push ahead with further illicit consecrations of new bishops. Such a course of action would clearly be a disaster for the church. Yet it has happened intermittently over the past years and as recently as the summer of 2011. In the face of these negative developments, the Vatican has been extremely patient. In fact, on April 22, 2008, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, wrote a “secret” letter to the bishops in 224

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China. He called on them to obtain greater freedom through direct and respectful dialogue with civil authorities.40 Other leading church figures differed, demanding more courage and less compromise. In a letter published in January of 2009, Cardinal Joseph Zen Zekiun of Hong Kong insisted that Chinese bishops boycott future meetings of the CCPA. He told them to avoid the “contradiction” of being “secretly united with the Holy Father” while at the same time being part of an independent church.41 How can they claim allegiance to Rome, and, at the same time, represent an independent church? Thus, the church in China still exists in an uneasy status quo.42 It does so, in part, because of the CCP’s religious policies. In fact, there seems to be a rather simple but surprising explanation for the CCP’s current religious policy. It seems the CCP has abandoned the Maoist legacy of aggressive atheism and replaced it with a “neo-imperial sacral hegemony,” in which the state does not attempt to eradicate religion.43 Rather, it domesticates religion and helps it find a place in a “harmonious society.” However, it is clear who is in control, for “the government is the master, religion the follower.” In short, “[i]n its new incarnation, the supposedly secular Party assumes a sacred aura. It now presents itself as the carrier of a sacred national destiny.”44 In this way, the current regime has more in keeping with the legacy of Confucian emperors than with Marxism.45 In fact, in 2008, a CCP leader stated that the party was no longer a “revolutionary party” but a “ruling party.”46 The current delicate situation seems to mirror that of the 1950s, the very history recounted in this book. In fact, Cardinal Zen—who was born in Shanghai and helped to rebuild the church there in the 1980s by teaching at the Shanghai seminary—asks if the “open policy” since 1979 has produced any real change. Although he appreciates what advances there have been, he lists the damaging side effects: the prestige of the Patriotic Association has been enhanced, and the bishops have become increasingly “enslaved.” Writing on September 8, 2010, the fifty-fifth anniversary of the key event narrated in this book—Cardinal Zen reminded Chinese Catholics of the pope’s words: “[E]ven if at the present everything seems to be a failure, your suffering for the faith will surely bring victory to the church.”47 Victory or defeat? One may ask if the last thirty years have witnessed much of either. For there seems to have been little retreat for either the CCP or the church. But there also seems to have been precious little advance. 225

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A Parable This book has tried to answer the question of how the Catholic Church in Shanghai was able to resist Communist control for so long. The combination of a unifying ideology, a strong leadership, and a well-articulated organization were crucial in this resistance. Shanghai Catholics remained unified and held to the integrity of the faith. Still, we all know the end of the story. By 1960, the party was able to dismantle the church and replace it with a “puppet” church. The party arrested Catholic leaders, suppressed Catholic organizations, and confiscated Catholic institutions. During the havoc of the Cultural Revolution, all organized expressions of religion were forbidden. Even so, the party was unable to destroy the church. Although some Catholics renounced their faith, others did not. The faith lived on in their hearts. And with renewed—albeit limited—religious freedom, these believers rapidly reestablished themselves as a church. Yet the church that emerged was deeply divided. One can argue endlessly whether the church in China is currently one or two. In any case, it is a divided church. This was the enduring legacy of the CCP’s religious policy. It failed in destroying the church; it succeeded in dividing it. Christians believe that a divided community stands in need of reconciliation. Otherwise, it stands under judgment. As late as 2001, the old novice classmates Fan and Jin met to determine a future bishop for Shanghai. They could not agree. As with the leaders, so with the followers. “Patriotics” insist they are in communion with Rome. This appears true enough as Jin himself seems to be reconciled with Rome. The “patriotic” church is now the “official” church in the eyes of the government. It has “registered” with the government, and no longer needs to continue a shadowy underground existence. For these privileges, the CCP has demanded its pound of flesh, for the “official” church has subjected itself to intense government control and scrutiny. The fate of the “underground” church has been harsher, for underground Catholics would not pay the CCP its pound of flesh. For this, and for their heroic loyalty to the pope, they continue to be persecuted by the CCP. But they also have been wounded by the Vatican and its cautious and nuanced policy. Even so, perhaps their greatest suffering—in this vicious family fight—has come from one of their former members: Louis Jin Luxian, who for over twenty-five years now has been the most influential Catholic leader in Shanghai. 226

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They remember with great clarity that Jin knelt at the altar at Sheshan Basilica in 1954 and pledged—and led others to pledge—fidelity to the church. Within a year—and under great duress—he made damaging statements about the church. And over the years, he seems not to have defi nitively addressed this deep wound. Thus, “loyal” Catholics feel most deeply wounded by one who was once one of them. Yet despite these transgressions, some of those with whom I have spoken are simply waiting for an apology from Jin for these past hurts. They feel an apology would go a long way toward healing those scars. Jin, for his part, says his “conscience is clear,” and he is doing—quite effectively, it would seem—all he can to reconcile and rebuild the church. Shanghai’s Catholics have not been fully released from the prisons of their own making. For years now, both Jin and Fan, and those who follow them, have been going to their respective altars. Reconciliation should be neither easy nor cheap, especially in a group as wounded as this one. However, until the Catholics of Shanghai settle their differences, their attempts to offer their gifts to all the people of Shanghai will be frustrated. But we all know that reconciliation cannot be forced. It must be freely asked for. And freely given.

227

A NOTE ON S OUR CE S

NOTE S

BIBLIOGR APHY

INDE X

A NOTE ON SOURCES

Since I have framed my work in terms of Catholic resistance to CCP religious policy, this work, by necessity, has relied on two broad categories of sources: “Catholic” sources and CCP sources. The Catholic sources alone can be subdivided into four major groups. The first group is unpublished archival material. Early in my research, I gained access to the California Jesuit Archives, the archives of my own Jesuit province, that houses letters written by Jesuits who were living—until their arrest or expulsion—in the heart of Shanghai during the 1950s. It was there I found a thick dossier of letters written by Charles McCarthy. A Jesuit priest with a degree in journalism, McCarthy reported on church affairs in China until 1949, when he was made superior of the Jesuit School of Theology in Xujiahui. In this capacity, McCarthy kept up a voluminous and detailed correspondence with his superiors in San Francisco, as well as with friends and family, writing hundreds of letters until his arrest in June 1953. Since finding that original cache of letters, I have also obtained copies of his letters from the Jesuit China Province Archives in Taipei, from the Ricci Institute in San Francisco, and from his brother Walter McCarthy. Having once been told that Jesuit missionaries were expelled from China empty handed, I have been impressed with the amount of material that has actually found its way out of China and into Jesuit archives worldwide. This rich material includes letters written by Chinese students from prison, accounts from recent refugees, the latest news from mainland China, and internal church documents—including those marked “confidential”—that describe in detail the strategies of Catholic resistance. Indeed, I have relied extensively on some of these latter documents to thicken the texture of the narrative. Further, at the Maryknoll Mission Archives in New York, I obtained the letters of Bishop James Edward Walsh, the executive secretary of the Catholic Central Bureau (CCB) in Shanghai. Walsh’s fi le also included copies of letters from Archbishop Anthony Riberi, the Vatican internuncio to China at the time. We can only imagine what might be in Riberi’s fi les in Rome once they are open to the public. Sadly, the Jesuit mission archives in Shanghai were largely destroyed by the Jesuits themselves before the arrival of the CCP. Other church archives in Shanghai were most likely destroyed or confiscated by the police. The second group of Catholic sources is the many missionary journals, magazines, and newsletters that were produced by foreign and Chinese Catholics. 231

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These publications were often written for promotion and fund-raising efforts and should be read in that light. The welter of these publications should come as no surprise, as the China mission was one of the largest missionary enterprises the Catholic Church has ever undertaken. Moreover, missionary zeal was combined, in this instance, with the latest techniques of print culture then available. Indeed, for these reasons, I have limited my use of many of these publications. However, two such publications stand out for being more objective and candid. The first is the China Missionary Bulletin which began in 1948 in Shanghai. It soon moved to Hong Kong, and, over the years, changed its name to the Mission Bulletin, and finally to Asia in 1960. This publication was not meant for fund-raising. Rather, in its own words, it was an in-house “trade journal” for missionaries. It included items of interest for veteran missionaries: debates over mission methods, news summaries from the Chinese dioceses, and reports from the Communist press. In addition, especially from 1953 to 1955, the China Missionary Bulletin interviewed recently expelled missionaries who had just crossed the border into Hong Kong. In fact, Laszlo Ladany, Jesuit priest, China watcher, and founder of China News Analysis, got his start there, often writing under the pseudonym A. Road. The second key missionary publication for my purposes was the Bamboo Wireless, published from October 1952 to April 1959. It was an in-house Jesuit newsletter, which contained “news of our China missionaries in and out of China.” As such, it was meant to keep exiled Jesuits abreast of developments in their former missions. Given the political sensitivities of the time, it was not to be sent into China. The third group of Catholic sources consists of eyewitness memoirs. The fi rst set of memoirs was written mainly in the mid-1950s to early 1960s by foreign missionaries who had recently been expelled from China. Often these books— understandably—have a strong anti-Communist stance. In the Presence of My Enemies (1963), I Met a Traveller: The Triumph of Father Phillips (1958), and Chrétiens dans la Chine de Mao (1955) are just some of the titles. The second set of memoirs was written largely after 1979 by Shanghai Catholics themselves. By then many of them had been released from labor camps, and some of them were able to leave China. One of the fi rst of these books was Catherine Ho’s Many Waters. (The 1996 English version was called The Lark and the Dragon: Experiences of a Chinese Woman Prisoner of Conscience.) In addition, such books as The Bright Cloud by Philomena Hsieh have been published by the Taiwan-based “September 8th” Editorial Board, whose mission is to keep alive the memory of the persecuted church in China. The fourth of my Catholic sources are oral interviews that I conducted in Shanghai, Taiwan, and the United States with living eyewitnesses. For example, I was able to conduct three interviews with Louis Jin Luxian, the current bishop of Shanghai, and the last surviving member of the Shanghai Jesuit leadership team. I was also able to conduct several interviews with one of Cardinal Kung’s former secretaries. Finally, I have also interviewed some of Cardinal Kung’s family members and close friends, including his niece Margaret Chu and his nephew Joseph Kung, the driving force of a foundation named after his uncle. For sources that gave insight into CCP religious policy, I initially began with the major Chinese newspapers of the time, such as the army-controlled Liberation 232

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Daily from Shanghai and the party-controlled People’s Daily from Beijing. In particular, in October 1951, June 1953, and September 1955, the Liberation Daily chronicled the attack on the Shanghai Catholic community, fi lling its pages day after day with front-page editorials and full-page photo spreads. The heightened press attention underscored the high priority the CCP gave to its campaigns against the church. Internal CCP documents—understandably—have proven more elusive. Much sensitive material, including whole classification numbers relating to religious policy, remains strictly off limits, often even to party members. However, an extraordinary break occurred at the Shanghai Municipal Archives—perhaps the fi nest archives in China—in the summer of 2006. It was there that I discovered recently declassified dossiers of “top-secret” material, including material from the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) and the Propaganda Department. These remarkable documents give a rare insider’s look at the campaigns directed against the Shanghai church. They also give a highly detailed account of the implementation of CCP religious policy from the elite to the grassroots level. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, this is the fi rst book ever on Christianity in Maoist China to include such crucial internal CCP documents. Indeed, the CCP often presents a monolithic, unperturbed, and placid façade to the outside world. Yet here we have lists of individual cadres assigned to specific “religious” work, intimations of discord in the party ranks, admissions of mistakes made, and the fi nal preparations of the third and fi nal “strike-hard” campaign against the Kung “clique,” the one that would effectively crush Catholic resistance. All these details not only describe the successes and frustrations of the protracted campaign against the church, they also provide richly human details into the zeal inspired and the cost endured by both parties. Other CCP sources have proven even more elusive. In the future, one of the most important archives to consult would be those of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau (PSB). From back-reading the Catholic sources, we can only infer that thick dossiers exist on nearly every person mentioned in this book. Some Catholics, both Chinese and foreign, were interrogated for hundreds of hours; some wrote self-accusations hundreds of pages in length; and some were followed, photographed, and reported on for months and even years. In addition, the police confiscated many Catholic archives. It is hard to imagine that this material has been destroyed. The Shanghai Municipal Archives has taken a lead. Perhaps other crucial archives will follow suit.

233

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INT R O DUC TI O N

1. This is a paraphrase of a statement made by Father John Tung (Dong Shizhi) in June 1951. See “September 8th” Editorial Board, 80–81. 2. Frederick C. Teiwes, “Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime,” 51. 3. For a discussion of the campaigns against secret societies and popular religions, see David Ownby, “Imperial Fantasies: The Chinese Communists and Peasant Rebellions.” 4. In the Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the CCP (March 5, 1949) Mao Zedong stated: “After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be enemies without guns; they are bound to struggle desperately against us, and we must never regard these enemies lightly.” The quotation is from James T. Myers, Enemies without Guns: The Catholic Church in the People’s Republic of China, v. 5. Richard Bush, Religion in Communist China, 22–23. 6. I rely mainly on an unpublished translation titled “Document 1959” which is housed in the Germain papers at the Jesuit China Province Archives, and I use the pagination found in this document. For a more accessible version, see Li Weihan, “La Iglesia Católica y Cuba: Programa de accíon” [The Catholic Church and Cuba: Program of Action]. The original was purportedly written by the CCP to the Cuban Communist Party. Hereafter, it is referred to as the Li Weihan Document. 7. According to Eric O. Hanson’s Catholic Politics in China and Korea (1980), Shanghai Catholics had strong “transnational” ties to the Vatican, ties that ultimately threatened the CCP’s desire to form subjects loyal only to the party. In Hanson’s view, the CCP would have been satisfied with simply forcing the church to cut its transnational ties. He believes the CCP only wanted to control—but not destroy—the Catholic Church in China. Largely based on the work of Hanson, Bob Whyte, in his Unfi nished Encounter: China and Christianity, argues much the same. In contrast to Hanson, James Myers’s Enemies without Guns asserts that being a transnational actor only made the church more difficult to control. Myers does not see transnationalism as the primary threat to the CCP. Rather, for Myers, the clash was ultimately between different conceptions of the truth: 235

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Communism vs. Catholicism; atheism vs. theism. Myers asserts the CCP persecuted the church because “it held, taught, proselytized and defended an alternate version of the truth” (87). The CCP wanted to destroy the church, and the result was a “‘religious’ war” (204). I think Myers’s view has been vindicated with the newly declassified CCP archival material. 8. See R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, 87, passim. 9. Steve A. Smith, “Local Cadres Confront the Supernatural: The Politics of Holy Water (Shenshui) in the PRC, 1949–1966,” 1021. 10. SMA A22–1–233, “Guanyu Shanghai Tianzhujiao gongzuo de jieshao” [Introduction concerning Shanghai Catholic work]; emphasis added. 11. See the work of James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance and his Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. See also Scott’s discussion of “legibility” in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. For a discussion on resistance and its usefulness as a category in studying religion, see Robert P. Weller, Resistance, Chaos, and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts, and Tiananmen, 3–15. 12. For a discussion of early CCP history, see David E. Apter and Tony Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic. Pages 81 to 85 describe the reasons for the clandestine nature of the CCP cell groups. 13. Laszlo Ladany, The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921– 1985: A Self-Portrait, 103. 14. Li Weihan Document, 1. 15. In fact, there is a lively debate on how to characterize the early years of the PRC. Some maintain that it was a golden age, others that it was a time of terror. For a good discussion of these contending schools of thought, see Jeremy Brown, “Terrible Honeymoon: Struggling with the Problem of Terror in Early 1950s China.” See also Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz, “The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China: An Introduction,” in Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China, edited by Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz. For the role state-sanctioned violence played during these years, see Julia Strauss, “Morality, Coercion and State Building by Campaign in the Early PRC: Regime Consolidation and After, 1949–1956.” 16. See Elizabeth J. Perry, “Shanghai’s Strike Wave of 1957.” 17. SMA, A22–1–233. 18. In fact, Christianity was no newcomer to China. The fi rst known Christian missionaries to what is now China were from the Syrian Church of the East. They traveled overland in the seventh century. In the fourteenth century, Franciscan missionaries established a bishopric in Beijing, as well as several missions in the south. In fact, the pope and Kublai Khan even exchanged letters. Yet the resulting Christian communities—never large in absolute numbers—were later pushed to the margins or disappeared altogether. It was not until Jesuits arrived at the end of the sixteenth century that Christianity fi nally put down deep and lasting roots in China. For further study of the history of Christianity in China, see Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, vol. 1, 236

N O T E S T O P A G E S 7 – 11

635–1800; and R.G. Tiedemann, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, vol. 2, 1800 to the Present. 19. Charles E. Ronan and Bonnie B.C. Oh, East Meets West: the Jesuits in China, 1582–1773. See also Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures. 20. See Liam Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724. 21. This early history is largely adapted from A Guide to Catholic Shanghai, 1–3. 22. Brockey, 59. 23. Guide to Catholic Shanghai, 1. 24. For the following sections, I rely heavily on Thomas A. Breslin, China, American Catholicism, and the Missionary, 10–20. Breslin himself relies on several magisterial works: Auguste M. Colombel, Histoire de la mission du Kiangnan, vol. 3, Du Père Gotteland, 1840 a l’Episcopat de Mgr. Languillat; and Jacques de la Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiangnan: Jesuites de la province de France (Paris) (1840–1898). Colombel’s work is a handwritten manuscript, which unfortunately contains some inaccuracies. De la Servière then corrected this work and used it as a basis for his own. 25. Breslin, 10. 26. Ibid., 11. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. For an excellent treatment of Catholicism as a local Chinese religion, along with a description of concurrent developments in Fujian Province, see Eugenio Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China. 30. Breslin, 11. 31. Jean-Paul Wiest, “Christianity in China,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia. 32. Cited in Beatrice Leung, Sino-Vatican Relations: Problems in Conflicting Authority, 1976–1986, 35. 33. Holy Spirit Study Centre Staff, “A Chronology of the Catholic Church in China in the Context of Selected Dates in World and Chinese History,” 27. 34. The subsequent sections rely heavily on Breslin, 10–20. As noted earlier, Breslin, in turn, uses the authoritative works of Colombel and de la Servière. 35. The preceding material is all from Breslin, 11. 36. The normal Catholic territorial division is a diocese, headed by a bishop. In mission territories, it is a vicariate apostolic, headed by a vicar apostolic. In mission regions, a vicar apostolic has essentially the same rank as a bishop. 37. Breslin, 11–12. A chart and maps showing some of the divisions of the original Diocese of Nanjing and the areas later given to Jesuit pastoral care can be found in Edward J. Malatesta, The Society of Jesus and China: A HistoricalTheological Essay, vol. 7, Discovery: Jesuit International Ministries, 58–70. 38. Breslin, 12. 39. From 1886 to 1926, the ratio of foreign to Chinese priests fluctuated from a high of 2.19 in 1905 to a low of 1.41 after World War I, before rebounding 237

N O T E S T O P A G E S 12 – 17

slightly again. See Pasquale M. d’ Elia, Catholic Native Episcopacy in China: Being an Outline of the Formation and Growth of the Chinese Catholic Clergy, 1300–1926, 50. 40. Breslin, 12. 41. Ibid. 42. Holy Spirit Study Centre Staff, “Xujiahui: Then and Now,” 74–79. All of the dates are from this source. 43. Breslin, 13. 44. The dates are all from Holy Spirit Study Centre Staff, “Xujiahui,” 74–79. 45. The dates are from ibid. 46. For the information on Lo Pahong, I am indebted to Peter Joseph Fleming, Chosen for China: The California Province Jesuits in China, 1928–1957: A Case Study in Mission and Culture, 132–142, 344–352. 47. Ibid., 135. 48. Ibid., 137–142. 49. Ibid., 344–352. 50. The evolution of an indigenous clergy in China was slow and tenuous at fi rst but rapidly gained in momentum by the early twentieth century. The trajectory is quite telling: 33 Chinese priests in 1800, 130 in 1842, 320 in 1886, and 470 in 1900. The most dramatic increase took place in the fi rst half of the twentieth century: 521 in 1910, 963 in 1920, and 1,500 in 1930. Further, the quality of the priests was also improving, a result of better public and Catholic education. See Pasquale M. d’ Elia, The Catholic Missions in China: A Short Sketch of the History of the Catholic Church in China from the Earliest Records to Our Own Days, 72. 51. Claude Soetens, ed., Recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe: Pour l’Église Chinoise I. La Visite apostolique des missions de Chine 1919–1920, 47. 52. For the statistics, see the chart in D’Elia, The Catholic Missions in China. 53. Guide to Catholic Shanghai, vii. 54. John Meehan, “The Savior of Shanghai.” See also, Marcia R. Ristiano, The Jacquinot Safe Zone: Wartime Refugees in Shanghai. 55. Fleming, 396. 56. On the origins of Sheshan as a pilgrimage site, see Jeremy Clarke, “Our Lady of China: Marian Devotion and the Jesuits.” 57. “Status Missionis Shanghai: Provinciae Franciae Societatis Jesu, Anno 1948–1949,” 25. 58. SMA, A22–1–233. 59. See Wiest. 60. Prasenjit Duara discusses lineages in rural Hebei and notes the linkages between them and religious and voluntary associations. More specifically, he also includes a discussion of the Catholic communities in this region. See Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942, 130– 132. See also Eriberto P. Lozada, God Aboveground: Catholic Church, Postsocialist State, and Transnational Processes in a Chinese Village, 143–146. 61. Michael Szonyi, Practicing Kinship: Lineage and Descent in Late Imperial China, 8. 238

N OTE S TO PAG E S 18 – 27

62. Ibid., 3–4. 63. “Zhu Gong Wenxiang Jiapu” [Revered Mr. Zhu Wenxiang genealogy]. 64. Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity, 88. 65. The private family history, Heiqiangtou, Baiqiangtou, Meijianong [Zhu family history], also contains much information. 66. Ibid. See also, “La Famille Tsu” [The Zhu family]. 67. Bergère, 89, 158. 68. Ibid., 157–158. 69. Ibid., 158. 70. Ibid. 71. Brian G. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919–1937, 69–70. 72. A contemporary and concise defi nition of the pope’s mission is found in Compendium: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 52. 73. “The Message of Fatima.” 74. All quotations are from Pope Pius XI, “Divini Redemptoris.” 75. CMB, vol. 1 (2), no. 1, September 1949, 8–9; Acta apostolicae sedis: Commentarium officiale, vol. 41, 334. 76. CMB, vol. 2 (3), no. 8, September 1950, 771. 77. John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II, 91. 78. Richard Madsen, China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society, 62–63; and idem, “Hierarchical Modernization: Tianjin’s Gong Shang College as a Model for Catholic Community in North China,” 164–65. 79. Catherine Ho, The Lark and the Dragon: Experiences of a Chinese Woman Prisoner of Conscience, 14. 80. I refer to this untitled letter from someone whose fi rst name was Mucai as “Letter from Prison,” January 14, [1956?], Germain Papers, JesChina. 81. The complete text is in CMB, 1948, 586–589. 82. Bishop James E. Walsh to Father General, November 22, 1948, Walsh Papers, MMA. 83. Both quotations are from Bishop James E. Walsh to Father General, November 22, 1948, Walsh Papers, MMA.

1. THE LINE S A R E D R AW N

1. John W. Clifford, In the Presence of My Enemies, 30. See also, Peter Joseph Fleming, Chosen for China: The California Province Jesuits in China, 1928– 1957: A Case Study in Mission and Culture, 462. 2. Fleming, Chosen for China, 462. 3. Frederic Wakeman Jr., “‘Clean-Up’: The New Order in Shanghai,” 37. 4. For general background on what the early years of CCP rule were like for the church, and for Shanghai in general, see Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity, 342–364. For the impact on charitable organizations, see Nara Dillon, “New Democracy and the Demise of Private Charity in Shanghai,” in Dilemmas of Victory. 239

N OTE S TO PAG E S 27– 33

5. Clifford, 29. 6. Ibid., 30. 7. Ibid. 8. Bishop James E. Walsh to Charles F. McCarthy [Maryknoll Father General], November 3, 1949, Walsh Papers, MMA. 9. The full text was published in CMB, vol. 1 (2), no. 3 (9), November 1949, 268–269. 10. A brief chronology of Kung’s life can be found in “September 8th” Editorial Board and Chinese (Catholic) Church Martyrological Information Office, eds., Dalu jiaohui jiaonanzhong de juren: Gong Pinmei shuji zhujiao [Giant of the persecuted mainland Chinese (Catholic) Church: Cardinal Kung Pinmei], 38–40. 11. Jean Lefeuvre, Shanghaï: Les enfants dans la ville: Vie chrétienne à Shanghaï et perspectives sur l’Église de Chine, 1949–1961, 98. 12. Fernand Lacretelle to Father General [John Baptist Janssens], April 24, 1950, Lacretelle Papers, JesChina. 13. Ibid. 14. Wakeman, 40–41. 15. Ibid., 40. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 24. 18. Wang Zheng, “Gender and Maoist Urban Reorganization.” 19. Ibid., 201, 206. 20. For a further treatment of continued resistance to the CCP, see the articles in Dilemmas of Victory, edited by Jeremy Brown and Paul Pickowicz. 21. Bergère, Shanghai, 355. 22. Jacques Guillermaz, The Chinese Communist Party in Power, 1949– 1976, 17. 23. Ibid., 17–18. 24. Ibid., 18. 25. Ibid., 19. 26. Laszlo Ladany, The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921– 1985: A Self-Portrait, 76. 27. Guillermaz, 18. 28. As cited in James T. Myers, Enemies without Guns: The Catholic Church in the People’s Republic of China, 28. 29. Bishop James E. Walsh to Charles F. McCarthy [Maryknoll Father General], November 3, 1949, Walsh Papers, MMA. 30. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], August 4, 1949, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 31. Ignatius Chu (Zhu), interview with author, April 20, 2006, Stamford, Connecticut. 32. SMA, A22–1–233, “Guanyu Shanghai Tianzhujiao gongzuo de jieshao” [Introduction concerning Shanghai Catholic work]. 33. George Germain to Father Vice Visitor [Paul O’Brien], August 13, 1952, copy in Germain Papers, JesChina. 240

N OTE S TO PAG E S 33 – 41

34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, October 4, 2006, Shanghai. 38. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], August 4, 1949, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 39. Mary Qian, The Victimized, 27. 40. The full text was published in CMB, vol. 1 (2), no. 3 (9), November 1949, 272. 41. CMB, vol. 1 (2), no. 3 (9), November 1949, 272. 42. CMB, vol. 2 (3), no. 9, October 1950, 793. 43. CMB, vol. 2 (3), no. 5, May 1950, 465. 44. See Myers, 1–14. For a more complete account, see Paolino Quattrocchi, Monaci nella tormenta. 45. Myers, 6. 46. See also Thomas J. Bauer, The Systematic Destruction of the Catholic Church in China. 47. Richard Bush, Religion in Communist China, 29. 48. Ibid., 30. 49. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], August 15, 1950, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 50. Ibid. 51. Jean-Claude Coulet, Father Beda Chang: Witness for Unity, 13. 52. Shen Baoyi, interview with author, September 23, 2006, Shanghai. 53. Coulet, 13. 54. For the biographical information on Beda Chang, I rely mainly on Coulet. 55. Clifford, 101. 56. For a discussion of Chang’s position I rely on Coulet; and Lefeuvre, 64–65. 57. Coulet, 12. 58. The quotations are all from Coulet, 13. 59. Ibid. 60. SMA, B22–2–1, “Guanyu Tianzhujiao, Jidujiao wenti de zhishi” [Instructions on questions concerning Catholic and Protestant churches]. 61. B22 is the classification for the Shanghai RAB. The remaining numbers refer to the catalog and document number. This early document is dated July 23, 1950, only a year after the Shanghai takeover. 62. SMA, B22–2–1. 63. Bush, 18. 64. Ibid., 30. 65. SMA, B22–2–1. 66. Catholic sources from the 1950s often referred to the same movement as the Three (Triple) Autonomies Movement. Yet the Chinese term remained the same and applied equally to both the Catholic and Protestant “religions.” Because of this, even when referring to the Catholic Church, I will use Three-Self Movement throughout the book. A brief history of how this movement affected the Catholic Church can be found in John Tong, “The Church from 1949 to 1990.” 241

N OTE S TO PAG E S 41 – 49

67. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], August 15, 1950, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 68. Beatrice Leung, Sino-Vatican Relations: Problems in Conflicting Authority, 1976–1986, 223. 69. See Philip L. Wickeri, Reconstructing Christianity in China: K.H. Ting and the Chinese Church, 36–47. 70. Bush, 178. 71. SMA, B22–2–1. 72. Bush, 180. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., 179. 75. Searle M. Bates, “Churches and Christians in China, 1950–1967: Fragments of Understanding,” 201. 76. See Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, “Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China.” 77. SMA, B22–2–1. 78. Lefeuvre, 70. 79. For the full text of this letter, see CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 2, February 1951, 97–99. 80. Eric O. Hanson, Catholic Politics in China and Korea, 79. 81. Ibid. 82. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, October 4, 2006, Shanghai. 83. SMA, A22–1–233. 84. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], August 4, 1949, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 85. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], December 3, 1950, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 86. CMB, vol. 2 (3), no. 9, October 1950, 866. 87. CMB, vol. 2 (3), no. 11, December 1950, 1038. 88. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 1, January 1951, 74. 89. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 2, February 1951, 176. 90. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 3, March 1951, 265. 91. Lefeuvre, 65–66. 92. Liam Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579– 1724, 100, 114–115. 93. Ignatius of Loyola, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, 66. 94. Much of the following information is taken directly from The Official Handbook of the Legion of Mary. 95. Ibid. 96. Ibid., 1. 97. Ibid., 1–2. 98. Ibid., 13. 99. Ibid. 100. Ibid., 271. 101. Ibid., 287. 102. Ibid., 232. 242

NOTE S TO PAG E S 49 – 57

103. Bishop Leo-Joseph Suenens, A Heroine of the Apostolate (1907–1944), Edel Quinn: Envoy of the Legion of Mary to Africa, 69. 104. Official Handbook of the Legion of Mary, 2. 105. Cecily Hallack, The Legion of Mary, 213. 106. As cited in ibid., 214. 107. Ibid., 213. 108. Suenens, 143. 109. Hallack, 213. 110. Suenens, 142–143. 111. Philomena Hsieh, The Bright Cloud, 400. 112. Qian, 10. 113. Ibid. 114. Hsieh, 32. 115. Ibid. 116. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” Germain Papers, JesChina. The document was written at the behest of Archbishop Riberi. Similar information is also found in Lefeuvre, 65–70. 117. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 2. 118. Ibid., 1. 119. Ibid., 2. 120. Qian, 26. 121. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 2. 122. Much of the following information is from “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément).” 123. Hsieh, 400. 124. Lefeuvre, 70. 125. Ibid., 71; translated in Hanson, 80–81. 126. SMA, A22–1–233. 127. Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, 96. 128. Xinhua News Agency, November 23, 1950. Translated in CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 1, January 1951, 50–52. 129. Ibid., 51. 130. Xinhua News Agency, December 13, 1950. It is referenced and translated in CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 2, February 1951, 148–150. 131. The full text is translated in CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 2, February 1951, 150. 132. The full text is in CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 4, April 1951, 295–297. 133. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 4, April 1951, 295. 134. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 5, May 1951, 440. 135. Ibid. 136. Ibid. 137. The full text is in ibid., 384–386. 138. There is a good discussion of these developments in Lefeuvre, 51–56. 139. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 5, May 1951, 384. 140. Ibid., 385–386. 141. For the following chronology, I rely on Lefeuvre, 51–56. 243

N OTE S TO PAG E S 57– 6 4

142. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 5, May 1951, 440. 143. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, September 25, 2006, Shanghai. See also, Jin Luxian, Juechu fengsheng: Huiyilü, shangjüan, 1916–1982 [Unexpectedly rescued from a desperate situation: Memoirs, part I, 1916–1982], 147–148. 144. Lefeuvre, 54–55. 145. Ibid. 146. Clifford, 17. 147. Ibid., 18. 148. Coulet, 16. 149. For the following see ibid., 17–20; and Lefeuvre, 80–82. 150. Coulet, 19. 151. Accounts of the arrests of Catholic religious personnel can be found in CMB. Many of these items, in turn, were compiled in André Jany, Les torturés de la Chine: Exposé historique témoignage missionnaire. 152. For the following, see Lefeuvre, 75–79. See also Hanson, 74–75. 153. Hanson, 75. 154. Ibid. 155. Lefeuvre, 88. Translated in Hanson, 75. 156. Lefeuvre, 76. 157. Qian, 22. 158. For the full text see Myers, 107–110. 159. For some excellent recent scholarship on the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries, see Julia C. Strauss, “Paternalist Terror: The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and Regime Consolidation in the People’s Republic of China, 1950–1953.” See also Kuisong Yang, “Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries.” For a good personal account of what happened in Shanghai, see Pu Ning and Shi Wuming. 160. Clifford, 37. 161. Frederick C. Teiwes, “Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime,” in Cambridge History of China, edited by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank, 88. 162. Francis Théry, “Note sur mon emprisonnement à Shanghai et mon expulsion de Chine,” Rouleau Papers, JesCalif. 163. Ibid., 6. 164. Ibid., 7. 165. Ibid., 16. 166. The full text of the letter is in CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 8, October 1951, 657–660. 167. Ibid., 659. 168. Ibid., 660. 169. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 4. 170. “The Present Situation of the Underground Catholics.” This document, in the author’s possession, purportedly came via Hong Kong and was translated from the Chinese. It was most likely written by a Chinese Jesuit. The section quoted is from the fi rst page of the subsection titled “The Main Tactics Communists Use to Overcome their Enemies.” 244

N OT E S TO PA G E S 6 4 – 73

171. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 5–7. 172. Hanson, 37. 173. “September 8th” Editorial Board, 80–81. See also Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church, 196–197. The original French edition was published in 1953, just a few years after these events. 174. “September 8th” Editorial Board, 81. 175. Ibid. 176. CMB, vol. 2 (3), no. 8, September 1950, 728. 177. Ibid., 732. 178. Pierce R. Beaver, “Nationalism and Missions,” 38. 179. SMA, A22–1–233.

2. TA R G E TED AT TAC K

1. For a discussion of the difference between ordinary propaganda and agitation propaganda, see Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, 62–68. 2. The pressure on foreign missionaries in general was mounting. In 1951, the number of missionaries either fleeing or being expelled from China became a flood. The Protestant churches were especially hard hit. By the end of the same year, almost no Protestant missionaries remained outside of Shanghai. 3. See Eric O. Hanson, Catholic Politics in China and Korea, 66–67. 4. These articles are translated in CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 7, August–September 1951, 584–588. 5. Ibid., 587–588. 6. Ibid., 588. 7. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 8, October 1951, 711–712. 8. Ibid., 710. 9. Translated in ibid., 712. 10. The document can be found in CMB, vol. 1, no. 1, 1948, 8–10. 11. Ibid., 1. 12. Bishop James E. Walsh to Father General, July 2, 1948, Walsh Papers, MMA. 13. Ibid. 14. Bishop James E. Walsh to Father General, August 29, 1948, Walsh Papers, MMA. 15. The previous quotations are from Bishop James E. Walsh to Father General, July 2, 1948, Walsh Papers, MMA. 16. Bishop James E. Walsh to Father General, August 29, 1948, Walsh Papers, MMA. 17. Aedan McGrath, “Supplement to Prison Story,” 56. 18. Ibid. 19. Theresa Marie Moreau, ed., Perseverance through Faith, a Priest’s Prison Story: The Memoirs of Father W. Aedan McGrath, 57–58. 20. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 7, August-September 1951, 584. 21. Ibid. 245

N OT E S TO PA G E S 73 – 8 3

22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 585. 25. McGrath, “Supplement to Prison Story,” 41. 26. Ibid., 55. 27. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 8, October 1951, 711–712. 28. Ibid., 713. 29. Philomena Hsieh, The Bright Cloud, 401. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Leo Roberts and Aedan McGrath, Mary in their Midst: The Legion of Mary in Action, 1948–1951, 48. 33. Catherine Ho, interview with author, March 11, 2005, Stamford, Connecticut. 34. Hsieh, 400. 35. Translated in CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 7, August-September 1951, 585–587. 36. Ibid., 585, 585, 586, 585, 585, 585. 37. Ibid., 585. 38. Quotes are all from ibid., 586. 39. Ibid., 586–587. 40. Moreau, Perseverance through Faith, 58–59. 41. McGrath, “Supplement to Prison Story,” 42. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 57. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 43. 46. Aedan McGrath, “Prison Story,” 8. 47. See Mary Qian, The Victimized, 29. 48. McGrath, “Supplement to Prison Story,” 46. 49. McGrath, “Prison Story,” 1. 50. Ibid., 3. 51. Ibid., 4. 52. Ibid., 8. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., 10, 10. 56. Translated in CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 10, December 1951, 827–831. 57. Ibid., 827. 58. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, October 4, 2006, Shanghai. 59. CMB, vol. 3 (4), no. 10, December 1951, 826. 60. Catherine Ho, The Lark and the Dragon: Experiences of a Chinese Woman Prisoner of Conscience, 20. 61. Qian, 29. 62. CMB, vol. 4 (5), no. 3, March 1952, 226. 63. Ho, 20, 20. 64. Hsieh, 401. 246

NOTE S TO PAG E S 83 – 88

65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 20. 67. Ho, 21. 68. Ibid. 69. Hsieh, 20. 70. Ibid. 71. The following information is from “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément).” 72. Ibid., 7. 73. Ibid., 8. 74. Hsieh, 12. 75. This is from the edited and translated version in CMB, vol. 4 (5), no. 1, January 1952, 43–47. 76. Ibid., 43. 77. Ibid., 46. 78. Ibid., 47. 79. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], November 24, 1951, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 80. Hsieh, 21. 81. Roberts and McGrath, 68. 82. Ibid. 83. Ho, 21. 84. Ibid. 85. Roberts and McGrath, 68. 86. Ho, 22. 87. Ibid., 22–23. 88. Lefeuvre, Shanghaï: Les enfants dans la ville: Vie chrétienne à Shanghaï et perspectives sur l’Église de Chine, 1949–1961, 91. 89. Ho, 23. 90. Ibid. 91. Moreau, ed., Perseverance through Faith, 50. 92. See “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément).” 93. The following is from Qian, 30. 94. Ibid. 95. Ibid., 32. 96. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 8. 97. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], October 31, 1951, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 98. Yi Qingyao, ed., Shanghai gonganzhi [Chronicle of Shanghai public security], 112. 99. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], August 13, 1951, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 100. The original French version is undated, but it was certainly written before the June 1953 English version. I have been unable to identify this JeanClaude Coulet, but I surmise it is the pen name of a French Jesuit intimately familiar with the events. 247

NOTE S TO PAG E S 88 – 99

101. Jean-Claude Coulet, Father Beda Chang: Witness for Unity, 21. 102. Father Aloysius Hsü, interview with author, October 22, 2006, Changhua, Taiwan. 103. Coulet, 24. 104. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], November 24, 1951, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 105. Translated in CMB, vol. 4 (5), no. 1, January 1952, 17–18. 106. Ibid., 17. 107. All quotations are from ibid., 17–18. 108. Ibid., 16. 109. Ibid., 17. 110. Coulet, 26. 111. For the following account, see Lefeuvre, 97–98. 112. Fides News Service, February 2, 1952. 113. Qian, 31. 114. CMB, vol. 4 (5), no. 2, February 1952, 141. 115. Ho, 23. 116. The following material is from “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément).” 117. Ibid., 8. 118. De Leffe later recounted the story of his arrest and imprisonment. See Jean de Leffe, Chrétiens dans la Chine de Mao. 119. CMB, vol. 4 (5), no. 2, February 1952, 140. 120. Lefeuvre, 99. 121. Ho, 24. 122. Qian, 35. 123. Theresa Marie Moreau, “Outlaw: One Priest in the Underground Chinese Church,” 34. 124. Ho, 24. 125. Ibid. 126. Hsieh, 401–402. 127. Pope Pius XII, “Cupimus Imprimis.” 128. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 3. 129. Hsieh, 25. 130. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, October 4, 2006, Shanghai. 131. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], January 2, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 132. Ibid. 133. Francis Théry, “Note sur mon emprisonnement à Shanghai et mon expulsion de Chine,” 21. 134. Ibid., 23–24. 135. Qian, 36–41; Jin Luxian, Juechu fengsheng: Huiyilü, shangjüan, 1916– 1982 [Unexpectedly rescued from a desperate situation: Memoirs, part I, 1916– 1982], 168–169. 136. Jin, Juechu fengsheng, 169. 137. Qian, 37. 248

NOTE S TO PAG E S 99 – 108

138. Jin, Juechu fengsheng, 169. 139. This material is all from “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément).” 140. Ibid., 6. 141. Ibid., 6. 142. Ibid., 6. 143. Ibid., 10. 144. Ibid., 10. 145. For the bulk of this information on thought reform at Aurora, I am indebted to Bamboo Wireless: News of Our Missionaries in and out of China [BW], October 1952, 22–26; BW, November 1952, 25–26; Lefeuvre, 103–112; and John Havas, “Four, Nine, Nine, Six,” Havas Papers, RISF. Another good account is Jean Monsterleet, Martyrs in China, 155–183. 146. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, October 4, 2006, Shanghai. 147. Havas, 28. 148. Ibid., 30–31. 149. Ibid., 32. 150. Ibid., 32, 38, 32. 151. On how the CCP took control of the Jesuit administered Gong Shang College in Tianjin, see Richard Madsen, “Hierarchical Modernization: Tianjin’s Gong Shang College as a Model for Catholic Community in North China,” 164–165. 152. This information is from “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 10. 153. This information is from ibid., 10–11. 154. Ibid., 11. 155. Havas, 33. 156. George Germain to Father Vice Visitor [Paul O’Brien], August 13, 1952, copy in Germain Papers, JesChina. 157. Xinwen ribao [News daily], August 8, 1952. 158. Ibid. 159. “In Memoriam, Fr. Georges Germain,” July–August 1978. The copy of Germain’s obituary is archived in JesChina. It is most likely from a Jesuit China or Hong Kong/Macau Province newsletter. 160. Havas, 63. 161. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], September 14, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 162. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 11. 163. George Germain to Father Vice Visitor [Paul O’Brien], August 13, 1952, copy in Germain Papers, JesChina. 164. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], May 20, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 165. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], July 31, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 166. Steve A. Smith, “Local Cadres Confront the Supernatural: The Politics of Holy Water (Shenshui) in the PRC, 1949–1966,” 1021. 167. Frederick C. Teiwes, “Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime,” 88–89. 249

N O T E S T O P A G E S 11 0 – 11 6

3. A R R E S TS A ND E X PUL S I ONS

1. BW, March 1953, 7. 2. Eric O. Hanson, Catholic Politics in China and Korea, 73. 3. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], April 22, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 4. Francis X. Zhu Shude’s life story can be found in the short booklet If the Grain of Wheat Dies—: Fr. Francis Xavier Chu Shu-teh, S.J. 5. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], June 25, 1951, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 6. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], July 1, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 7. Philomena Hsieh, The Bright Cloud, 29. 8. Ibid., 28. 9. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], July 13, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 10. Ibid. 11. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], February 13, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 12. Ibid. 13. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], January 30, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 14. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], March 13, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 15. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], October 11, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 16. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], November 10, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 17. Hsieh, 33. 18. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], May 23, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 19. SMA, A22–1–233, “Guanyu Shanghai Tianzhujiao gongzuo de jieshao” [Introduction concerning Shanghai Catholic work]. 20. Cai Shifang, Yesu de zhiyou: Zhu Hongsheng, Cai Shifang shenfu hezhuan [Intimate friends of Jesus: Collected biographies of Fathers Zhu Hongsheng and Cai Shifang], 17. 21. Kurt Becker, I Met a Traveller: The Triumph of Father Phillips, 27. 22. Mary Qian, The Victimized, 42. 23. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], December 4, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 24. Ibid. 25. Cai Shifang, Jidu zhanshi—Wang Rensheng [Father Wang Rensheng: A warrior of Christ], 60. 26. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 9. 27. Charles J. McCarthy to Francis Rouleau, June 7, 1953, Rouleau Papers, RISF. 250

N O T E S T O P A G E S 11 6 – 1 2 3

28. Cai, Yesu de zhiyou, 31. 29. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 9–10. 30. Charles J. McCarthy to Art Latham, October 20, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesChina. 31. See Cai, Yesu de zhiyou, 31; and Becker, 29. 32. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 9. 33. Charles J. McCarthy to Al Klaeser, November 16, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesChina. 34. Charles J. McCarthy to Francis Rouleau, November 23, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesChina. 35. BW, July 1953, 2–3. 36. “Notations sur l’Église de Shanghai (supplément),” 9. 37. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], May 30, 1952, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 38. Peter Joseph Fleming, Chosen for China: The California Province Jesuits in China, 1928–1957: A Case Study in Mission and Culture, 467. 39. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], May 23, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 40. Fleming, 467. 41. See ibid., 465–466. The quotation is from a 1985 taped interview with the Jesuit Albert Klaeser, who himself left Shanghai in 1952 to do his tertianship (spiritual year) in Australia. 42. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], April 22, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 43. Charles J. McCarthy to Father Provincial [Joseph O’Brien], May 23, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesCalif. 44. Charles J. McCarthy to Art Latham, March 18, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesChina. 45. BW, February 1953, 2. 46. Charles J. McCarthy to Francis Rouleau, March 22, 1953, McCarthy Papers, JesChina. 47. Ibid. 48. McCarthy’s letter of May 17, 1953, in BW, July 1953, 3. 49. SMA, A22–1–118, “Guanyu daji he quju Shanghai Tianzhujiaonei diguozhuyifenzi douzheng de xuanchuan gongzou tongzhi” [Notification concerning attacking and expelling the imperialists within the Shanghai Catholic Church]. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Much of the following composite account is from Jean Lefeuvre, Shanghaï: Les enfants dans la ville: Vie chrétienne à Shanghaï et perspectives sur l’Église de Chine, 1949–1961, 142–156. Another account can be found in Hu Meiyu, Le zai kuzhong [Joy amidst pain], 44–48. 55. Lefeuvre, 143. 56. Ibid. 251

N OT E S TO PA G E S 124 – 13 2

57. Ibid. 58. CMB, vol. 5 (6), no. 7, September 1953, 704. 59. Lefeuvre, 144. 60. Hsieh, 30. 61. Lefeuvre, 144. 62. Ibid. 63. For the following, see ibid., 144–145. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., 145. 66. Ibid., 145–146. 67. The song was titled the “Love of Jesus: Rise up Catholic Youth.” See ibid., 147–148. The original Chinese lyrics can be found in “September 8th” Editorial Board and Chinese (Catholic) Church Martyrological Information Office, eds., Zhongguo dalu kunan jiaohui wushinian jinqing jiniance: 1955–9–8—2005–9–8 [The suffering church of mainland China memorial book: 1955–9–8—2005–9–8]. 68. Lefeuvre, 152. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. BW, August 1953, 7–8. 72. Lefeuvre, 153. 73. Ibid., 154. 74. Ibid. 75. Becker, 42. 76. Ibid. 77. John W. Clifford, In the Presence of My Enemies, 67. 78. Lefeuvre, 149. 79. BW, November 1952, 2. 80. Ibid. 81. Lefeuvre, 149. 82. Much of this composite account is also taken from ibid., 149–156. 83. MB, vol. 6, no. 8, October 1954, 790. 84. Lefeuvre, 150. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid., 150, 151. 87. Ibid., 151. 88. MB, vol. 6, no. 8, October 1954, 790. 89. Lefeuvre, 150. 90. I have slightly adapted this translation from the BW, August 1953, 6–7. See also CMB, vol. 5 (6), no. 7, September 1953, 696–697. 91. Ibid. 92. Originally reported in the Courier Dove. The translation can be found in CMB, vol. 5 (6), no. 7, September 1953, 699–700. 93. CMB, vol. 5 (6), no. 7, September 1953, 700. 94. Ibid. 95. BW, September 1953, 2. 96. CMB, vol. 5 (6), no. 7, September 1953, 701. 252

N OT E S TO PA G E S 13 2 – 141

97. Francis X. Cai Shifang also recounts these events in Cai, Jidu zhanshi. 98. BW, August 1953, 11. 99. The following story is recounted in Abe Florendo, ed., My Life as a Missionary: From the Memoirs of Georges-Etienne Beauregard, S.J., 101–103. 100. For this account, see BW, October 1, 1953, 3–7. It was most likely written by Jean Lefeuvre. 101. BW, October 1953, 4. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., 5. 104. Ibid., 6–7. See also Lefeuvre, 195–200. 105. MB, vol. 6, no. 7, September 1954, 690. 106. BW, November 1953, 2. 107. Claudia Devaux and George Bernard Wong, Bamboo Swaying in the Wind: A Survivor’s Story of Faith and Imprisonment in Communist China, 64. 108. CMB, vol. 5 (6), no. 8, October 1953, 788. 109. MB, vol. 6, no. 7, September 1954, 690. 110. Theresa Marie Moreau, ed., Perseverance through Faith, a Priest’s Prison Story: The Memoirs of Father W. Aedan McGrath, 56–57. 111. MB, vol. 6, no. 8, October 1954, 790. 112. Jin, Juechu fengsheng: Huiyilü, shangjüan, 1916–1982 [Unexpectedly rescued from a desperate situation: Memoirs, part I, 1916–1982], 173. 113. Ibid., 174–175. 114. BW, October 1953, 2. 115. BW, July 1954, 2. 116. BW, December 1954, 1. 117. George Germain to Monsignor Bernardini [of Propaganda Fide], January 3, 1954, copy in Germain Papers, JesChina. 118. Ibid. 119. The full text is found in BW, April 1955, 2. 120. “Consecratio,” Germain Papers, JesChina. 121. Pope Pius XII, “Ad Sinarum Gentem.” 122. Ibid. 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid. 125. BW, February 1955, 1. 126. Jin, Juechu fengsheng, 176. 127. George Germain to Mon Révérend Père, February 3, 1955, Germain Papers, JesChina. 128. BW, October 1954, 3. 129. See Richard Bush, Religion in Communist China, 15. 130. BW, October 1954, 3. 131. Lefeuvre, 27. 132. Laszlo Ladany, The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921– 1985: A Self-Portrait, 57–58. 133. Ibid., 125. Pan Hannian spent many years in labor camps and was posthumously rehabilitated. 253

N OT E S TO PAG E S 141 – 152

134. See ibid., 124–127. 135. Hanson, 52. 136. “Sabotage and Revolt.” 137. SMA, A22–1–118. 138. SMA, A22–1–233.

4. A S S AULT

1. SMA, B22–1–32, “Shanghaishi renwei zongjiaoju guanyu suqing Tianzhujiaonei Gong Pinmei fangeming jituanzhong de jigou chengli ji gongzou renyuan peibei qingkuang” [Shanghai City advises the RAB’s “Liquidate the Kung Pinmei counterrevolutionary clique operating in the Catholic Church office” on the situation of setting up the system and allocating the work personnel]. 2. Ibid. 3. SMA, A22–1–233, “Guanyu Shanghai Tianzhujiao gongzuo de jieshao” [Introduction concerning Shanghai Catholic work]. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. SMA, B22–2–478, “Yi jiu jiu wu nian Tianzhujiao Shanghai jiaoqu shenzhirenyuan diaodong, kaidu, bijing mingdan” [1955 Catholic Diocese of Shanghai clergy transfers, assignments, (and) retreat rosters]. 9. SMA, A22–1–233. 10. Ibid. 11. Shen Baoyi, interview with author, September 23, 2006, Shanghai. 12. MB, vol. 7, no. 9, November 1955, 805–806. See also BW, October 1955, 2. 13. L’Église des écrasés: Shanghai 1949–1955, 4. 14. “The Catholic Church since 1949,” 19. 15. Shen Baoyi, interview. 16. MB, vol. 7, no. 9, November 1955, 807. 17. Ignatius Chu (Zhu), interview with author, March 9, 2005, Stamford, Connecticut. 18. Father Matthew Chu (Zhu), interview with author, October 22, 2006, Changhua, Taiwan. 19. Father Matthew Koo (Gu), interview with author, January 14, 2005, San Jose, California. 20. “September 8th” Editorial Board, 138. Cai recounts these events, but he had already been arrested in 1953. 21. Translated in MB, vol. 7, no. 10, December 1955, 887. 22. SMA, A22–1–233. 23. See Claudia Devaux and George Bernard Wong, Bamboo Swaying in the Wind: A Survivor’s Story of Faith and Imprisonment in Communist China, 74–75. 24. MB, vol. 7, no. 10, December 1955, 886. 25. Devaux and Wong, 75. 254

N OTE S TO PAG E S 152 – 159

26. Ibid. 27. SMA, A22–1–233. 28. Ibid. 29. SMA, A22–1–233; Yan Kejia, Catholic Church in China, 104 30. SMA, A22–1–233. 31. The September 13 issue of the Xinwen ribao [News daily] reports on the same meeting. 32. BW, April 1956, 3–4. 33. SMA, A22–1–233. 34. Ibid. 35. MB, vol. 7, no. 10, December 1955, 886. 36. BW, November, 1955, 2. 37. MB, vol. 9, no. 1, January 1957, 50–51. 38. SMA, A22–1–233. 39. Ibid. 40. L’Église des écrasés, 4. See also MB, vol. 9, no. 1, January 1957, 50. 41. See also BW, November 1955, 2–3, for a relatively complete list of the arrested religious personnel. 42. SMA, A22–1–233. 43. Fernand Lacretelle to Father Vice Visitor [Paul O’Brien], July 16, 1954, Lacretelle Papers, JesChina. 44. BW, August 1954, 3. 45. Ibid. 46. Richard Bush, Religion in Communist China, 125. 47. Lacretelle’s confession is multiply attested to in the sources. Louis Jin Luxian discusses this event, but does not mention Lacretelle’s name, in Dorian Malovic, Le pape jaune: Mgr Jin Luxian, soldat de Dieu en Chine communiste. However, when I interviewed Jin, he said that Lacretelle’s confession was “absolutely true.” Further, in his memoir, Jin does not hesitate to mention Lacretelle by name; see Jin Luxian, Juechu Fengsheng: Huiyilü, shangjüan, 1916–1982 [Unexpectedly rescued from a desperate situation: Memoirs, part I, 1916–1982], 177–178. Lacretelle is also mentioned by name in Cai, Yesu de zhiyou: Zhu Hongsheng, Cai Shifang shenfu hezhuan [Intimate friends of Jesus: Collected biographies of Fathers Zhu Hongsheng and Cai Shifang], 29; and in Eric O. Hanson, Catholic Politics in China and Korea, 78. Richard Bush also refers to “a highly respected missionary superior” who confessed. See Bush, Religion in Communist China, 125–126. Interestingly, in his otherwise excellent account, Lefeuvre is silent about Lacretelle’s confession, most likely out of deference to his former superior. 48. Xinhua News Agency, November 10, 1955. I have slightly adapted the translation found in MB, vol. 8, no. 3, March 1956, 220. 49. Sun Jinfu, ed., Shanghai zongjiaozhi [Chronicle of religion in Shanghai], 385. 50. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, October 4, 2006, Shanghai. 51. Malovic, 147. 52. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, September 25, 2006, Shanghai. 255

N OTE S TO PAG E S 159 – 16 6

53. Father Fernando Mateos, interview with author, October 26, 2006, Taipei; and Father André Rabago, interview with author, October 31, 2006, Taipei. 54. The copy of Lacretelle’s obituary is archived in JesChina. It is most likely from a Jesuit China or Hong Kong/Macau Province newsletter, May 1989, 27. 55. Ibid., 30. 56. Ibid., 30. 57. BW, August 1954, 2. 58. Ibid. 59. Hanson, 78. 60. Bush, 126. 61. Malovic, 147. 62. Ibid., 147–148. 63. Louis Jin Luxian, interview, September 25, 2006. 64. BW, November 1955, 8. 65. Malovic, 148. 66. Hanson, 84. 67. The copy I have is from the Germain Papers, JesChina. The text notes that the original was from the July 8 or 9, 1954, issue of Xinwen ribao [News daily]. 68. Shen Baoyi, interview. 69. Mary Qian, The Victimized, 60. 70. SMA, A22–1–233. 71. Bush, 125–126. 72. Ibid., 126. 73. Hanson, 78. 74. SMA, A22–1–233. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. Lefeuvre, Shanghaï: Les enfants dans la ville: Vie chrétienne à Shanghaï et perspectives sur l’Église de Chine, 1949–1961, 220–221. 78. SMA, B22–1–32. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. SMA, A22–1–233. 82. Ibid. 83. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, October 6, 2006, Shanghai. 84. “The Present Situation of the Underground Catholics” (in author’s possession). 85. Ibid. 86. Louis Jin Luxian, interview, October 4, 2006. 87. Renmin ribao [People’s daily], December 10, 1955. Translated in MB, vol. 8, no. 3, March 1956, 223–227. 88. For example, the article says that the chief members of the clique were Jin Luxian, Li Shiyu, Chen Yuntang, Zhu Hongsheng, Zhang Xibin, and others. Old and new “evidence” is listed, in part, as follows: “many directives, secret documents, radio dispatch and receiving sets, tele-communications equipment, arms, ammunition and confidential documents stolen from state organs. . . . Some 256

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 6 6 – 173

evidence was hidden in the Bishop’s official residence, some placed at the back of religious images in the churches, and some under the benches in the churches. They also seized large quantities of the party flag and the national flag of the Chiang Kai-shek traitorous group. The nuns also had a secret prison.” The article also says that the Jesuits Jin Luxian and Zhu Hongsheng were sent abroad for training, and that Jin and Chen Yuntang “principal members of the clique, under the shelter of preaching, carried out slander on the various policies and measures of the State during the transition period in sermons in different churches.” 89. Translated in MB, vol. 8, no. 3, March 1956, 226–227. 90. Xinhua News Agency, November 10, 1955. Translated in MB, vol. 8, no. 3, March 1956, 227–229. 91. MB, vol. 8, no. 3, March 1956, 228. 92. Ibid., 229. 93. Renmin ribao [People’s daily], December 11, 1955. Translated in MB, vol. 8, no. 3, March 1956, 220–223. 94. MB, vol. 8, no. 3, March 1956, 220. 95. Ibid., 220, 221. 96. Ibid., 222. 97. Ibid. 98. BW, March 1956, 1–2. 99. Ibid. 100. BW, April 1956, 3. 101. Catherine Ho, The Lark and the Dragon: Experiences of a Chinese Woman Prisoner of Conscience, 62. The fi rst time Catherine Ho was imprisoned was from September 8, 1955, to October 10, 1956.

5. FIN A L O PER ATI ONS

1. The major source of information for the following is SMA, A22–1–233, “Guanyu Shanghai Tianzhujiao gongzuo de jieshao” [Introduction concerning Shanghai Catholic work]. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. The document leaves out his full name. 6. Ibid. 7. MB, vol. 8, no. 5, May 1956, 332. 8. Ibid. 9. SMA, A22–1–233. 10. Lettre du R.P. [Révérend Père] Tsang (Vic. Cap. élu de Shanghai) à Melle Anna Tsu (cath. C. HK.) [Letter from Reverend Father Zhang Shiliang (Vicar Capitular elect) to Anna Tsu, a Hong Kong Catholic], May 5, 1956, Germain Papers, JesChina. 11. SMA, A22–1–233. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 257

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 74 – 1 8 2

14. BW, December 1956, 3. 15. George Germain to Father Visitor [Joseph Oñate], July 10, 1956, Germain Papers, JesChina. 16. George Germain to Father Visitor [Joseph Oñate], June 25, 1957, Germain Papers, JesChina. 17. BW, December 1956, 4. 18. Rapport d’un Séminariste de Shanghai arrivé à Macau le 26 June 1957 [Report from a seminarian (who) arrived in Macau on 26 June 1957, Part 1], Germain Papers, JesChina. 19. BW, May 1957, 1. The quotation is from a March 29, 1957, article in the Hong Kong Sunday Examiner. 20. MB, vol. 8, no. 6, June 1956, 464. 21. Margaret Chu, “A Catholic Voice out of China.” 22. Rapport d’un Séminariste de Shanghai arrivé à Macau le 26 June 1957 (Suite) [Report from a seminarian (who) arrived in Macau on 26 June 1957, Part 2], Germain Papers, JesChina. 23. This information is from Mary Qian, The Victimized, 66–67. 24. Ibid., 67. 25. The information from this paragraph is from Rapport d’un Séminariste, Part 2. 26. BW, April 1957, 2. 27. Ibid. 28. The document is translated in MB, vol. 9, no. 8, October 1957, 533–534. 29. Ibid., 554. 30. Rapport d’un Séminariste, Part 1. 31. SMA, B22–1–71–1, “1957 nian Tianzhujiao gongzuo jihua yaodian” [Essential points for the 1957 Catholic work plan]. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. SMA, B22–1–72, “Shanghaishi 1956–57 nian zongjiao gongzuo guihua” [Shanghai municipal 1956–57 religious work plan]. 35. SMA, B22–1–71–1. 36. “The Catholic Church since 1949,” 13. 37. MB, vol. 7, no. 10, December 1955, 884–885. This article reported that on October 2, Father F. Sanz, an Augustinian Recollect from Spain; and two Jesuit lay brothers, Brother George Csazar (from Hungary) and Brother Joseph Tanaka (originally from Japan) arrived in Hong Kong. On October 3, three Belgian priests from the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM) arrived in Hong Kong. They were Fathers Jules Scheyvaerts, Paul Coucke, and Albert Weyts. 38. Peter Joseph Fleming, Chosen for China: The California Province Jesuits in China, 1928–1957: A Case Study in Mission and Culture, 455–457. 39. Ibid., 456. 40. Sun Jinfu, ed., Shanghai zongjiaozhi [Chronicle of religion in Shanghai], 387. The same confession was also printed in Gu Yulu, Zhongguo Tianzhujiao de guoqu he xianzai [Catholic China’s past and present], 112–113. 258

N OTE S TO PAG E S 182 – 18 8

41. See Edward Hunter, Brain-washing in Red China, passim. 42. Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: The Study of Brainwashing in China, 4–5. 43. Ibid., 5. 44. John W. Clifford, In the Presence of My Enemies, 67. 45. James T. Myers, Enemies without Guns: The Catholic Church in the People’s Republic of China, 133. 46. Lifton, 15. 47. BW, June 1957, 1. This account is partially based on an April 26, 1957 article in the Hong Kong Sunday Examiner. 48. “Extraits de la Colombe Messagére” [Extracts of the Courier Dove], Germain Papers, JesChina. 49. Ibid. 50. MB, vol. 9, no. 7, September 1957, 462. 51. Anthony S.K. Lam, The Catholic Church in Present-Day China: Through Darkness and Light, 26. 52. Pope Pius XII, “Ad Apostolorum Principis.” 53. Ibid. 54. See “Introduction” [about Mary Yang Yuzhen], June 17, 1959; and “Note sur les sessions d’etudes (endoctrinement) de la jeunesse Catholique de Shanghai” [Note on the study sessions (indoctrination sessions) of the Catholic Youth of Shanghai], Germain Papers, JesChina. 55. At the beginning of 1959, Mary Yang Yuzhen applied for a Hong Kong visa to see her fiancé. Reluctantly, the CCP gave her permission to travel. She arrived in Hong Kong via Macau in June 1959. She soon found out that her fiancé had already been married for three years. In a fit of remorse, she repented of her deeds against the church and made reparation. In fact, she asked for a papal pardon for her actions. Coincidentally, she was the niece of the “patriotic” bishop Yuen Wenhua, who was illicitly consecrated in Hankou on April 13, 1958. 56. MB, vol. 11, no. 9, November 1959, 872–873. 57. “Note sur les sessions d’études (endoctrinement) de la jeunesse Catholique de Shanghai” Germain Papers, JesChina. 58. MB, vol. 11, no. 9, November 1959, 873. 59. Ibid. 60. See MB, vol. 11, no. 4, April 1959, 395. 61. SMA, B22–1–80, “Guanyu zai Tianzhujiaonei jiaoyu fadong qunzhong jin yibu kaizhan fandi aiguo douzheng de jidian yijian” [Several opinions concerning how to mobilize the Catholic masses in taking a further step in launching the anti-imperialism patriotic struggle]. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. MB, vol. 11, no. 4, April 1959, 396. 65. Louis Shen, Witnessing God’s Mercy, 33–40. 66. Myers, 251–260. 67. Ibid., 251. 68. Margaret Chu, “A Catholic Voice out of China.” 259

N OTE S TO PAG E S 18 8 – 19 6

69. Myers, 253. 70. Ibid., 252. 71. SMA, B22–2–248, “Guanyu zuzhi jiaotu canguan ‘Tianzhujiao shehuizhuyi jiaoyu yundong zhanlanhui’ de qingshi baogao” [Report requesting instructions on how to organize believers to visit the “Catholic Socialist Education Movement Exhibition”]. 72. Ibid. 73. MB, vol. 11, no. 10, December 1959, 1066. 74. Beatrice Leung, Sino-Vatican Relations: Problems in Conflicting Authority, 1976–1986, 164. 75. Ibid. 76. Cardinal Kung Foundation, His Eminence Ignatius Cardinal Kung: 1901–2000, 12. 77. Based on “Shanghaishi zhongji renmin fayuan dui Gong Pinmei fangeming panguo jituan’an de panjueshu” [Court verdict against the Kung Pinmei traitorous counterrevolutionary clique]. A copy of this document is in the author’s possession. Part of the document can also be found in “September 8th” Editorial Board, Blessings of the Divine Bounty of “September 8th”: In Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the “Sept. 8th” Persecution of the Catholic Church in Mainland China, 1955–1995, 57–60. 78. Xinhua News Agency, March 17, 1960. The translation is from “Counterrevolutionary Traitors Sentenced in China,” Survey of the China Mainland Press 2223. 79. Cai, Yesu de zhiyou: Zhu Hongsheng, Cai Shifang shenfu hezhuan [Intimate friends of Jesus: Collected biographies of Fathers Zhu Hongsheng and Cai Shifang], 53–54. 80. “Shanghaishi zhongji renmin fayuan dui Gong Pinmei.” 81. Xinhua News Agency, March 17, 1960. The translation is slightly adapted from “Counter-revolutionary Traitors Sentenced in China.” 82. Ibid. 83. “Shanghaishi zhongji renmin fayuan dui Gong Pinmei.” 84. Bishop Walsh wanted to remain in China and be a moral support to the Shanghai Catholic community. On October 18, 1958, he was fi nally taken from house arrest and imprisoned in the Ward Road Jail. The outside world received no word about him until December 15, 1959, when the CCP mentioned that he had been arrested for violating Chinese law. 85. Xinhua News Agency, March 18, 1960. The translation is slightly adapted from “US Spy Sentenced in China,” Survey of the Mainland China Press 2223. 86. Father Simon Chu (Zhu), interview with author, June 21, 2010, Taipei, Taiwan. 87. Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 2, The Great Leap Forward, 1958–1960, 272. 88. Ibid. 89. The following is based on Leung, 162–168. Leung uses a January 18, 1987, version of the appeal, which was sent to Jian Hua, director of the People’s Supreme Court. 260

NOTE S TO PAG E S 19 6 – 207

90. Ibid., 165. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid., 165-166. 93. Ibid., 166–167. 94. MB (Asia), vol. 12, no. 8, October, 1960, 889. 95. “The Catholic Church since 1949,” 23. 96. George Germain to Father Provincial [of the China Province], May 9, 1960, Germain Papers, JesChina. 97. SMA, B22–1–110. 98. MB (Asia), vol. 12, no. 2, February 1960, 205. 99. MB, vol. 11, no. 5, May 1959, 489. 100. MB, vol. 11, no. 8, November 1959, 873. 101. Ibid. 102. Fu Hualing, “Re-education through Labour in Historical Perspective,” China Quarterly, no. 184 (2005): 816. 103. “September 8th” Editorial Board, 138–139. 104. Ibid., 139. 105. In the following sections, I have slightly edited a translation of the Li Weihan Document housed in the JesChina Archives. 106. Bates, “Churches and Christians in China, 1950–1967: Fragments of Understanding,” 210. 107. Li Weihan Document, 1. 108. Ibid., 1. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid., 1-2, 1, 2. 111. Ibid., 2. 112. All references are from Ibid., 3. 113. Ibid., 3, 4. 114. All references are from Ibid., 4. 115. Ibid., 4. 116. Ibid., 4. 117. I have slightly edited the translation of Gabriel Chen Tianxiang’s untitled 1988 letter from Jiangxi [Province] Number Four Prison to the government. I refer to this document as “Letter from prison to the government officials of Jiangxi Province,” 1988, Chen Papers, JesChina.

EPILO G UE

1. Louis H.L. Shen, Witnessing God’s Mercy, 156. 2. Xi Lian, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China, 204. 3. Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, 113–131. 4. Photographs and information on Chinese Jesuits who were released during this time can be found in Jesuits in China: 1949–1990, published by the Jesuit China Province and Jesuit Macau-Hong Kong Province, [1990?]. 261

N OT E S TO PA G E S 2 07– 221

5. Michael Chu, “Report about the Church in China,” 1979, Malatesta Papers, RISF. 6. For a martyrology of the Catholic Church in China under CCP rule up to 1954, see Thomas J. Bauer, The Systematic Destruction of the Catholic Church in China. 7. Chu, “Report about the Church in China.” 8. The information that follows is from Lacretelle’s obituary. The obituary was copied from a Jesuit China Province newsletter. See Stanislaus de Geloes, “Fr. Fernand Lacretelle (1902–1989),” 1989, Lacretelle Papers, JesChina. 9. These notes are from the Lacretelle Papers, Jesuit France Province Archives, Vanves, France. 10. See Richard Madsen and Fan Lizhu, “The Catholic Pilgrimage to Sheshan.” 11. Ibid., 87. 12. George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, 595–596. 13. See Yan Kejia, Catholic Church in China. 14. Lu Weidu, “Reflections of a Chinese Catholic Layman,” 125–133. 15. For more information on state control of religion in contemporary China, see Anthony S.K. Lam, Decades of Vacillation: Chinese Communist Religious Policy and its Implementation. 16. Betty Ann Maheu, “The Catholic Church in China,” 12. 17. This chapter subheading and some of the following information is taken from M.A. Thiessen, “A Tale of Two Bishops,” Crisis, February 2002. Thiessen was able to meet with both Joseph Fan Zhongliang and Louis Jin Luxian. 18. “Shanghai Catholic Seminary Admits 36 in Its First Class.” 19. Adam Minter, “Keeping Faith,” 82. 20. Ibid. 21. Jin, Juechu Fengsheng: Huiyilü, shangjüan, 1916–1982 [Unexpectedly rescued from a desperate situation: Memoirs, part I, 1916–1982], 184–186. 22. For more on Ladany’s understanding of Jin’s position, see Laszlo Ladany, The Catholic Church in China, 73–81. 23. Louis Jin Luxian, interview with author, October 4, 2006, Shanghai. See also Jin, Juechu Fengsheng, 184–186. 24. This information is from Thiessen, 13–14. 25. Ladany, The Catholic Church in China, 65. 26. On the formation of Shanghai’s new Catholic religious congregation for women, see Adam Minter, “The Sisters of Shanghai: A Congregation of Nuns Flourishes in Shanghai.” 27. Jean Charbonnier, Guide to the Catholic Church in China 2004, 548– 549, 567. 28. Ladany, The Catholic Church in China, 76. 29. Ibid., 76–77. 30. Jin, Juechu Fengsheng, 178. 31. Jin Luxian, Collected Works of Jin Luxian. 32. The Catholic Church in Shanghai Today. 33. Larry Lewis, “New Shepherd for Shanghai.” 262

NOTE S TO PAG E S 222 – 225

34. Xiufen Zhou, ed., Lishishang de Xujiahui [Zikawei in history]. 35. Joseph Kung, The Cardinal Kung Foundation Newsletter, 4. 36. Ibid. 37. Pope Benedict XVI, “To the Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons, and Lay Faithful of the Catholic Church in the People’s Republic of China.” 38. Ibid. 39. Richard Madsen, “Catholic Revival during the Reform Era,” 486. 40. Bernardo Cervellera, “The Bishop of Beijing, the Vatican and Compromising with the Patriotic Association.” 41. Ibid. 42. The same is true for the Protestant churches as well; see Ryan Dunch, “Christianity and ‘Adaptation to Socialism.’” 43. These insights are from Richard Madsen, “Back to the Future: Pre-Modern Religious Policy in Post-Secular China.” 44. Ibid. 45. Prasenjit Duara, “Religion and Citizenship in China and the Diaspora,” 64. 46. Madsen, “Back to the Future.” 47. Cardinal Joseph Zen, “Cardinal Zen: Catholic Church in China, Dialogue or Confrontation with the Government.”

263

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JesChina

Jesuit China Province Archives, Taipei, Taiwan

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RISF

Ricci Institute Archives, San Francisco, California

SMA

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274

INDEX

Ad Apostolorum Principis, 185 Ad Sinarum Gentem, 138 American Jesuits, 14, 29, 67, 114, 118, 127, 181. See also Jesuits Annuario Pontifi cio, 219 anti-Christian violence, 12–13 Anti-Rightist campaign, 184 arrest(s): expulsions and, 109–142; house arrests, 70, 119, 124, 131–137, 140, 148–150, 179, 189, 190, 217; of Kung Pinmei, 1, 148–151, 171; mass denunciations and, 151–156 Asia, 232 Asian nationalism, 14–15, 66 assaults, 143–168 attacks, targeted, 68–108 Aurora Jesuits, 62. See also Jesuits Aurora University, 13, 23, 35, 38, 46, 51–52, 60–63, 70, 89, 100–106, 109–110, 112, 130, 174, 209 Aurora Women’s College, 23, 50–51, 76, 79, 98, 112 Bamboo Wireless, 232 Beauregard, George, 133 Benedict XVI, Pope, 220, 223 Beran, Josef, 102 Bergère, Marie-Claire, 19 Bertone, Tarcisio, 224 Besi, Louis-Marie de, 9–11 “Big Meeting,” 155–157 Bolumburu, Luis, 148 Boxer Rebellion, 13

brainwashing, 5, 101, 127, 180–185, 200, 209. See also “thought reform” Breuvery, Emmanuel de, 98 Brière, Octavius, 134 Bright Cloud, The, 232 Büchner, Georg, 207 Cai Liangjia, Thaddeus, 189 Cai Shifang, Francis X., 89, 115–116, 129, 132–134, 150, 177–179, 189–192, 195, 200–201, 209 California Jesuits, 14, 111, 115. See also Jesuits catechism groups: attending, 26; founding, 52–53, 84, 87–88; leaders of, 63–64, 132, 157–158, 175; sermon series and, 117; survival of, 95–98, 110–112 Catholic Central Bureau (CCB), 65–75, 81, 95–97, 120, 140, 180, 191 Catholic Church: construction boom of, 12–13; defending, 68–108; destroying, 4–6, 171, 173, 201–205, 226; dividing, 173–175, 210–213, 226; fi rst church, 7–8; indigenization of, 15–16, 107; loyal church, 173–180; “official” church, 213, 217, 226; “open” church, 211–212, 214–215; “patriotic” church, 170, 173–180, 190, 201–202, 211–215, 222, 226; puppet church, 169–173, 190, 198–199, 226; survival of, 5–6; underground church, 177–178, 210–214, 217–219, 222–223, 226. See also Shanghai Catholic community 275

INDE X

Catholic Church in Shanghai Today, The, 219 Catholic community. See Shanghai Catholic community Catholic martyr, 87–91. See also martyrdom Catholic power, 17–22 Catholic reassertion, 62–67 Catholic religion: special characteristics of, 6–8, 172; success of, 7–8, 47. See also Shanghai Catholic community Catholic religious revival, 45–46 “Catholic renascence,” 16 “Catholic triangle,” 23, 110, 117 Catholic unity: maintaining, 226; unraveling, 162–165 Catholic Youth, 24–26, 46–53, 60–65, 83–115, 123–133, 145–155, 164, 174, 186, 209–212 Catholicism, 4, 9–24, 29, 60, 69, 101, 150, 211 Cattaneo, Lazzaro, 7 Chang, Beda, 38–39, 47, 52, 54, 59–61, 65, 81, 87–91, 107 Chen Fumin, 174 Chen Geng, 30 Chen Jiali, 84 Chen Tianxiang, Gabriel, 115, 132, 191, 195, 204 Chen Yi, 29, 92, 132, 141 Chen Yiming, 143, 144, 148, 164 Chen Yuhui, 204 Chen Yuntang, Joseph, 115, 191, 195 Chen Zhemin, Matthew, 57, 70, 74, 191, 195 Chiang Kai-shek, 16, 65, 77, 90, 122, 130–131, 152, 190, 193–194 China Missionary Bulletin, 36, 66, 71, 73, 90, 132, 232 China News Analysis, 232 Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), 168–169, 183–192, 198–201, 211–219, 223–225 Chinese Catholics, 2, 13, 18, 44, 57, 70–74, 119–122, 138, 148, 209–211, 220, 225. See also Shanghai Catholic community; Shanghai Catholics

Chinese Communist Party (CCP): fi nal operations of, 169–205; founding of, 5; legacy of, 226; power of, 2–26; practice maneuvers by, 118–123; sources from, 232–233; subduing Catholic Community, 206–207 Chinese Jesuits, 51–52, 83, 93–119, 131, 136, 148, 152. See also Jesuits Chongqing Manifesto, 55–56 Chrétiens dans la Chine de Mao, 232 Christ the King Parish, 23, 27, 45, 67, 89, 96, 109–118, 123–130, 134, 137, 149, 166, 177, 180, 191, 206; clash at, 123-127 Christianity: banning, 8; imperialism and, 22, 41–42; legalizing, 10; roots of, 4, 236n18; survival of, 207–208 Chu, Margaret, 188–189, 232 Chu, Michael, 207–209 church: construction boom of, 12–13; defending, 68–108; destroying, 4–6, 101, 173, 201–205, 226; dividing, 173–175, 210–213, 226; fi rst church, 7–8; indigenization of, 15–16, 107; loyal church, 173–180; “official” church, 213, 217, 226; “open” church, 211–212, 214–215; “patriotic” church, 170, 173– 180, 190, 201–202, 211–215, 222, 226; puppet church, 169–173, 190, 198–199, 226; survival of, 5–6; underground church, 177–178, 210–214, 217–219, 222–223, 226. See also Shanghai Catholic community Church: Holy and Catholic, The, 57 Chu Rong, 143 clan members, 17–22 Clifford, John, 27–28, 124, 127, 180–183, 209 Common Program, 31–32, 56, 68, 91–92, 122, 140 Communism: denouncing, 25, 101–102, 193, 216; gradualists and, 40; ruthlessness of, 27, 37–38; training resources, 66; warnings against, 20–21; world Communism, 4, 58, 102 Communist cadres, 2, 24

276

INDE X

Communist power, 2–7, 22–23, 35, 226 Communist takeover, 22–26, 33, 102, 210, 221 Communist victory, 3, 17, 22–26, 216 confessions, 151–162, 182–183, 255n47 Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. See Propaganda Fide Confucius, 8, 103, 206 Costantini, Celso, 15 Coulet, Jean-Claude, 38, 88, 91 counterrevolutionaries, 1–3, 30–32, 58–62, 190–196 Courier Dove (Xin Ge), 96, 174, 177, 183 Cultural Revolution, 198, 206–213, 222, 226 Cupimus Imprimis, 95 Cuomo, Mario, 81 Deymier, Joseph Jean, 130 Diniz, Joseph, 136 Divini Redemptoris, 21 Duff, Frank, 47, 77 Edict of Toleration, 8 education issues: Catholic schools, 58–62; counterrevolutionaries and, 58–62; curricula reform and, 34–36; Nationalist Educational Plan, 35; re-education, 182–183; Socialist Education Movement, 185–190 Engels, Friedrich, 4 executions, 61–62 expulsions, 109–142. See also arrest(s) Fan Liangzuo, 174 Fan Zhongliang, Joseph, 213–221, 227 Fatima, 20, 48, 51, 63, 102, 109 Faury, Paul, 134 Fides News Agency, 101, 104, 120, 209 fi nal operations, 169–205 Formula of the Institute, 47 French Catholicism, 13, 14 French Jesuits, 10–18, 22, 44–46, 98–99, 108, 134, 158–159, 174, 218. See also Jesuits Fu Hezhou, Nepocumene, 133, 191, 195

Gao Gang, 141 Gatz, Joseph, 124 Geneva Convention, 135, 181 Germain, George, 29, 33, 101, 104, 106, 122, 133, 137, 159, 166, 193, 199, 209, 216 global Catholicism, 12, 17–22. See also Catholicism gradualists, 39–40 Graham, Billy, 219 Great Famine, 208 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 206–207. See also Cultural Revolution Gu Mingyu, 84 Gu Pingsheng, 192 Guide to Catholic Shanghai, A, 15 Guillermaz, Jacques, 31 Guo Chunhe, 191 Guo Xuejing, Peter, 176–177 Hanson, Eric, 44, 235n7, 255n47 Haouisée, Auguste, 15, 22 Havas, John, 101–106, 136, 210 He Chengxiang, 140 Henry VIII, King, 185 Henry, Yves, 29, 136 Hitler, Adolph, 21, 117 Ho, Catherine, 23, 82, 86, 94, 188, 232 Hou Zhizheng, 191 Houle, John, 124, 180 Hsieh, Philomena, 50, 51, 76, 83, 85, 232 Hu Feng, 141 Hundred Flowers campaign, 177, 184 Hu Wenyao, 60–61, 71, 81, 88, 91, 105, 110, 156, 174, 198–199 I Met a Traveller: The Triumph of Father Phillips, 232 imperialism: anti-imperialism, 132, 170, 187, 196, 211; Christianity and, 22, 41–42; conspiracy and, 131; influence of, 41, 67, 70, 92, 109, 142; opposing, 32, 56; propaganda and, 121–122 In the Presence of My Enemies, 182, 209, 232

277

INDE X

incarceration of priests, 1, 97, 126, 157, 164–165. See also arrest(s) indigenization, 15–16, 107 indigenous resources, 7, 9, 11–12, 17, 41, 238n50 indoctrination sessions, 46, 52, 85, 101, 112, 118, 135, 140, 146, 152–156, 164, 170, 179, 183–190, 199–200 initiative, seizing, 137–142 Italian Jesuits, 7. See also Jesuits Jacquinot, Robert, 16, 22 Jesuits, 7–25, 27–53, 58–67, 83, 86–89, 93–119, 123, 127–140, 147–148, 150, 152, 156-160, 165, 174, 177, 180–183, 187–189, 191–192, 196, 200, 204, 206–210, 213–218, 222, 231–232 Jiang Min, 190 Jiang Minsheng, Lawrence, 192 Jiangnan mission, 7, 11–13 Jin Luxian, Louis, 58, 96, 98, 115, 136–139, 150, 158–161, 164–165, 189, 191, 193, 195, 213–221, 226–227, 232 John XXIII, Pope, 200 John Paul II, Pope, 215 Kangxi, Emperor, 8 Khan, Kublai, 204 Khrushchev, Nikita, 196 Kingsley, Charles, 3 kinship networks, 17–22 KMT. See Nationalist (KMT) army Koo Guangzhong, Matthew, 93, 188–189 Korean War, 54, 167, 197 Küng, Hans, 219 Kung, Joseph, 215, 222, 232 Kung Pinmei, Ignatius: appeal of, 196– 198; arrest of, 148–151, 171; birth of, 29; burden on, 137–139; Catholic Youth and, 53; Christ the King and, 113–114; clique of, 1–2, 114, 156, 165–166, 184, 190–195, 207–208, 256n88; death of, 216; denouncing, 141, 152, 163–168, 174, 187–188, 198; early years of, 28–29; family interviews on, 232; interrogating, 134; latter years of, 215–216;

on Legion leadership, 83, 86; phone tapping of, 133; prosecuting, 143–144; resistance and, 91–93, 151–156; on retreat lists, 147; revival and, 46; ruining reputation of, 187–188; sentencing, 195, 199; sermon series and, 116–119; transitional period and, 42–45; trial of, 190–196, 199 Kung Shirong, Joseph, 43 labor camps, 2, 159, 180, 189, 200–201, 204–214 Lacretelle, Fernand, 28–29, 37, 44, 89, 98, 119, 123, 128–130, 136, 157–163, 166–167, 210, 216, 219, 255n47 Ladany, Laszlo, 218 Land Reform movement, 34, 123, 131, 167, 194, 197 Lark and the Dragon: Experiences of a Chinese Woman Prisoner of Conscience, 232 Lebbe, Vincent, 15 Lefeuvre, Jean, 46–47, 123, 128–130, 163 Leffe, Jean de, 93, 97 Legion of Mary, 46–53, 67–87, 91–97, 105, 110, 112, 135–136, 140–141, 149, 186, 201, 208, 210 Legionaries, 47–52, 75–87, 91–96, 112, 136, 149, 154, 210 Legrand, Francis X., 71, 73, 75, 97, 136 Lenin, Vladimir, 40, 101, 103 Leninism, 26, 172, 197 Leo XIII, Pope, 21 “Letter of Appeal,” 196–198 Leung, Beatrice, 197 Liberation Daily, 61, 69, 73, 77, 81–82, 84, 90, 151, 154, 161, 165, 187, 232–233 Li Dequan, 174 Lifton, Robert, 182 Li Shiyu, 191, 195 Li Side, 174, 199 Liu Bingzhi, 190–191 Liu Jiping, 156 Liu Jize, 192, 195 Li Weiguang, 70, 184 Li Weihan, 140, 201–205 278

INDE X

Li Wenbao, 192 Li Wenzhi, 155, 174, 183, 186, 212 Lo (Lu) family, 14, 17 Lo Pahong, Joseph, 14, 19, 174, 195, 211 local kinship networks, 17–22 Lou Jiating, 190 Loyola, Ignatius, 7, 28, 47 Lu Baihong. See Lo Pahong, Joseph Lu Boming, 143 Lu Dayuan, Joseph, 189 Lu Weidu, 120, 174, 183, 191, 195, 199, 206, 211

Mindszenty, Joseph, 102 Mission Bulletin, 232 Montfort, Louis de, 47 Mother Teresa, 219 Motte, James, 74

MacFarquhar, Roderick, 196 Magisterium, 42 Ma Jianzhong, 19 Many Waters, 232 Maoism, 4. See also Mao Zedong Mao Zedong, 3–5, 55, 79, 85, 177, 186, 235n4 Marian Sodalities, 46–53 Martinez-Balirach, Jesus, 139 martyrdom, 24–25, 28, 87–91, 115, 118, 208 Marx, Karl, 3 Marxism, 36, 39, 46, 53, 202, 225 Marxism-Leninism, 26, 197 Ma Shulun, 61 mass denunciations, 151–156 mass expulsions, 135–136 Ma Xiangbo, 13, 19, 60, 92 McCarrick, Theodore, 217 McCarthy, Charles Joseph, 29, 33, 45, 85–89, 97, 107–122, 130, 162, 180–182, 209, 231 McCarthy, Walter, 231 McCormack, Joseph Patrick, 130, 180 McGrath, Aedan, 49–51, 72–76, 79–80, 85, 136, 210 Mendés-France, Pierre, 160 Mexican Jesuits, 25. See also Jesuits militant Catholicism, 24. See also Catholicism militant operations, 62–67, 97–100 Military Control Commission (MCC), 27, 35, 70, 82, 104

Nanjing Manifesto, 58, 69–71, 184 Nationalist Educational Plan, 35 Nationalist (KMT) army, 2–3, 21, 26, 33–35, 58, 65, 70, 152 “New Democracy,” 55 New York Times, 165 News Daily, 70, 105, 130, 151 “Notations,” 51, 63–64, 83, 86–87, 103, 116 novitiates, 97–100, 177 O’Brien, Joseph, 109 “official” Catholics, 211 “official” church, 213, 217, 226 Offi cial Handbook of the Legion of Mary, The, 48–50 “open” church, 211–212, 214–215 Palm, John Baptist, 124 Pan Hannian, 29–30, 61, 91–92, 141–144 Pan Yinsheng, Alice, 98 parable, 226–227 Paris, Prosper, 13 “patriotic” Catholic, 42, 58, 70, 152, 173–178, 185–186, 191–195, 202, 211–212 “patriotic” church, 170, 173–180, 190, 201–202, 211–215, 222, 226 People’s Daily, 57–58, 78, 81, 165–166, 193, 233 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 23, 26–27, 33–36, 85, 101, 124, 131 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 4, 6, 32, 54, 69, 236n15 Perry, Elizabeth, 6 Phillips, Thomas Leonard, 115, 124, 127, 130, 162, 180–181 Pius IX, Pope, 21 Pius XI, Pope, 14–16, 21 Pius XII, Pope, 16, 46, 95, 138, 185, 216

279

INDE X

power, sinews of, 17–22 practice maneuvers, 118–123 Prévost, Gustave, 73, 75, 85, 136 priests, incarceration of, 1, 97, 126, 157, 164–165. See also arrest(s) Pro, Miguel, 25 “progressives,” 96–100, 118 Propaganda Department, 121–122, 143–144, 148, 192, 233 Propaganda Fide, 33, 106, 120, 178 Protestants, 10, 12–13, 39, 41–42, 55, 103, 245n2 Public Security Bureau (PSB), 30, 61–62, 78, 85, 93, 104, 128–134, 141–147, 157–159, 177, 188, 217, 233 puppet church, 169–173, 190, 198–199, 226 Qian, Mary, 86–87, 97–98, 177 Quinn, Edel, 50 Quint, Gabriel, 75, 136 Raguin, Yves, 98 raids, 130, 148–150 Rao Shushi, 141–142, 144 recent developments, 223–225 reconciliation, 227 re-education, 182–183. See also education issues reform period, 207–214 registration movement, 81–87, 91–97 Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB), 55, 106, 140–145, 152, 170–171, 179, 183–187, 221, 233 religious freedom, 1–26, 35–67, 122–123, 180, 190, 198–204, 211–212, 226 religious liberties, 2–3, 57–58 religious policy, 36–42, 54–58, 226 religious revival, 45–46 Renirkens, Clement, 120 Resist America, Aid Korea (RA-AK) Movement, 54–56, 81, 84, 131 “revolutionary masses,” 5 Riberi, Anthony, 16, 28–29, 33, 47, 50–51, 56–58, 67–72, 106, 170, 193, 231 Riberi: Imperialism’s Tool of Invasion, 22 Ricci, Matteo, 7, 128, 222

rice Christians, 36 rice Marxists, 36 “Road of Death,” 165–168 “Rockefeller of China,” 14 St. Ignatius Church, 13, 29, 89, 99–100, 115, 213, 222; clash at, 128–132 St. Peter’s Church, 23, 46, 87, 89, 104, 110, 115, 117, 120, 132, 134, 191, 206 school curricula, 34–36. See also education issues Scum of Catholicism: Spellman, Riberi, and Yu Bin, 22 security apparatus, 29–32, 79, 158, 165, 188, 221. See also Public Security Bureau Separation Act, 14 sermon series, 114–119 “Shanghai Catholic Big Meeting,” 155–157 Shanghai Catholic community: construction boom in, 12–13; destroying, 4–6; development of, 7–22; fighting for survival, 5–7; goal of, 5–6; reconciliation of, 227; religious freedom and, 1–26; special characteristics of, 6–8, 172; subduing, 206–207; success of, 7–8, 47. See also Shanghai Catholics Shanghai Catholics: defending church, 68–108; expulsions and, 109–142; fi nal operations and, 172, 178, 184–190; fi rst church of, 7–8; goal of, 5–6; incarceration of, 1–2; reform period and, 207–214; religious freedom and, 1–26, 35–67, 122–123, 180, 190, 198–204, 211–212, 226. See also Shanghai Catholic community Shanghai Diocese, 28–29, 42–45, 67, 147, 158, 169, 189–193, 199, 217, 237n36 Shanghai Jesuits, 28, 52, 63, 165, 174, 191, 213, 218. See also Jesuits Shanghai Legionaries, 81–87, 91–97. See also Legion of Mary Shanghai Municipal Archives, 39, 233 Shen Baoyi, 120, 149 Shen Baozhi, 192, 212

280

INDE X

Shen Duocai, 82, 208 Shen Shixian, Joseph, 73, 74, 75, 188 Shi Ximin, 143–144, 164 Shu Haiyun, 192, 194 “show trial,” 190–196, 199 “sinews of power,” 17–22 Smith, Steve A., 108 Socialism, 2, 4, 24, 197–198 Socialist Education Movement, 185–190. See also education issues Sodalities, 46–53 Song Zhizhen, Joseph, 177, 189 special militants, 62–65, 84-86, 97–100, 108 Spellman, Francis, 16, 73, 170, 193 Spiritual Exercises, 28, 47, 104 Stalin, Joseph, 120 Stepinac, Aloysius, 102 Suppo, Michael, 81 Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement (1951), 61, 105, 141, 167 Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Movement (1955), 141–142, 146–147 Suzhou Diocese, 28–29, 43, 147, 163, 191 Szonyi, Michael, 17 Taiping Rebellion, 12 taking stock, 106–108 Tang Lüdao, 191, 195, 199 targeted attacks, 68–108 taxation issues, 32–34 Teiwes, Frederick, 61, 108 territorial division of dioceses, 28–29, 237n36 Tertullian, 208 Terwagne, Alain de, 120–122 Téteau, Louis, 99 Théry, Francis, 62, 68, 73, 97 “thought reform,” 100–106, 182. See also brainwashing Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: The Study of Brainwashing in China, 182 Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), 39–42, 55–60, 65–73, 75, 78, 88, 92–96, 138, 169, 241n66 time warp, 207–210

transitional period, 42–45 transnationalism, 17, 235n7 Treaty of Nanjing, 10 Treaty of Tianjin, 10 trial, 190–196, 199 True Devotion to Mary, 47 Tsu, Nicholas. See Zhu Zhiyao, Nicholas Tung Shizhi, John, 65–66, 71 Tutu, Desmond, 219 underground church, 177–178, 210–214, 217–219, 222–223, 226 underground novitiates, 97–99, 177 united front strategy, 5, 29–32, 40, 215, 218 United Front Work Department (UFWD), 54–55, 140, 183, 199, 201 Vatican Council I, 10 Vatican Council II, 207 Vatican: The Enemy of Peace and Democracy, 22 Vatican’s Reactionary Thought and Policy, The, 22 Victimized, The, 86 virgins, 9, 11–12 volunteer movement, 54, 59–60, 131, 194 Vos, Joseph, 74, 86 Wagner, Cyril, 180 Wakeman, Frederic, 27 Walsh, James E., 26, 28, 32, 67, 71–75, 139–140, 180, 189, 193–196, 199, 210, 231, 260n84 Wang Mingdao, 42 Wang Rensheng, Louis, 110, 115, 132, 191, 195, 208 Wang Xiaoyun, 143–144 Wang Zhe, Anthony, 135 Wang Zuo’an, 224 “war plans,” 143–148 Wen Tianxiang, 204 Wong, George, 134–135, 152, 209 World War I, 14, 66 World War II, 45, 67, 114, 120 Wu Yaozong, 41, 71 281

INDE X

Xavier, Francis, 117, 177 Xing Wenzhi, Joseph, 221–223 Xinhua News Agency, 55, 61, 165, 192, 195 Xu, Candida, 8 Xu family, 8, 12, 17 Xu Guangqi, Paul, 7–8, 14, 128, 134, 222 Xu Jianguo, 87, 134, 141 Xu Zonghai, Vincent, 134–135, 174, 189 Xuexi cankao (Study reference), 57, 70 Xujiahui, 8, 12, 23, 27, 29, 38, 44, 46, 88, 90, 110, 123, 128, 136–137, 149, 154, 159, 164, 166, 174, 176, 186–187, 191, 200, 206, 209, 213, 215, 221–222, 231 Yang Fan, 30, 61, 141 Yang Shida, 61, 69–71, 156, 174, 198–199 Yang Yuzhen, Mary, 185–186, 259n55 Yang Zengnian, 199 Ye Mingren, 60 Ye Xiaowen, 224 Ying Mulan, 105–106 Yongzheng, Emperor, 8 Yu Pin, 21, 43, 58, 90

Zen Zekiun, Joseph, 225 Zhang Duanliu, Louis, 148, 168, 174. See also Zhang Jiashu, Louis Zhang Jiashu, Louis, 174, 183, 187, 198–199, 206, 209, 213–215 Zhang Shiliang, Francis X., 171–172, 176, 183, 187, 198 Zhang Xibin, Matthew, 94, 191, 195 Zhang Zhengming. See Chang, Beda Zhou Enlai, 41, 56–57, 148, 183 Zhu family, 17–19 Zhu Hongbao, Martha, 20 Zhu Hongsheng, Vincent, 20, 111, 115, 118, 124–126, 134, 191, 195, 210 Zhu Jilin, Joseph, 19 Zhu Kaimin, Simon, 15, 19, 58, 120, 139 “Zhu Kungjia Rightist Clique,” 184 Zhu Lide, Michael, 207 Zhu Shude, Francis X., 96, 99, 111, 118, 124, 131, 191, 195, 207 Zhu Xuefan, Sylvester, 171–172, 191, 195, 216 Zhu Yisheng, Francis, 195 Zhu Zhiyao, Nicholas, 19, 195 Zhu Zuoshi, Ignatius, 189 Zikawei, See Xujiahui

282