Decree of the Holy Office on Questions from the China Mission (1656)
The Holy Office’s answers of 1656 to a second set of questions from China. The third describes the scholars’ ceremony in the hall of Confucius as a civil act and is answered that it may be permitted to Christians.
The decree recalls the questions answered in 1645 and then takes up others. The third asks whether Christian scholars may perform the ceremony of taking their degrees in the hall of Confucius. As described there, no priest of an idolatrous sect takes part, the scholars acknowledge Confucius as their teacher with the same bows that pupils make to living masters, and the hall is a school and not properly a temple. The Congregation answers, “according to what has been set out above”, that the ceremonies may be permitted, because the cult appears to be merely civil and political. A fourth question on ceremonies for the dead follows.
Set beside the decree of 1645, it shows that Rome’s answer depended on how the rite was described to it. See the Chinese Rites Controversy.
Cited in
- 1704 to 1742, firm date