Church militant : Bishop Kung and Catholic resistance in Communist Shanghai / Paul P. Mariani.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mariani, Paul Philip.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gong, Pinmei, 1901-2000.

Gong, Pinmei.

Catholic Church--China--Shanghai--History--20th century.

Catholic Church.

Communism and Christianity--China--Shanghai--History--20th century.

Communism and Christianity.

Communism and Christianity--Catholic Church--History--20th century.

Shanghai (China)--Church history--20th century.

Shanghai (China).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (312 p.)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

By 1952 the Chinese Communist Party had suppressed all organized resistance to its regime and stood unopposed, or so it has been believed. Internal party documents-declassified just long enough for historian Paul Mariani to send copies out of China-disclose that one group deemed an enemy of the state held out after the others had fallen. A party report from Shanghai marked "top-secret" reveals a determined, often courageous resistance by the local Catholic Church. Drawing on centuries of experience in struggling with the Chinese authorities, the Church was proving a stubborn match for the party.Mariani tells the story of how Bishop (later Cardinal) Ignatius Kung Pinmei, the Jesuits, and the Catholic Youth resisted the regime's punishing assault on the Shanghai Catholic community and refused to renounce the pope and the Church in Rome. Acting clandestinely, mirroring tactics used by the previously underground CCP, Shanghai's Catholics persevered until 1955, when the party arrested Kung and 1,200 other leading Catholics. The imprisoned believers were later shocked to learn that the betrayal had come from within their own ranks.Though the CCP could not eradicate the Catholic Church in China, it succeeded in dividing it. Mariani's secret history traces the origins of a deep split in the Chinese Catholic community, where relations between the "Patriotic" and underground churches remain strained even today.

Contents:

The lines are drawn

Targeted attack

Arrests and expulsions

Assault

Final operations.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674265820

0674265823

9780674063174

0674063171

OCLC:

761693823