Acknowledgments
Research for my book Christianity in Rural China led me to archives in France and Ireland, and the opportunity to peruse reports and letters from missionaries. With notes in hand, I later traveled to China to visit the rural sites where Catholics had long ago built churches, hoping some of them still stood. I will never forget the first time I saw an old church in the countryside. In 1994, as I walked along a dusty, narrow country road that led to an out-of-the-way village in eastern Jiangxi Province, walls and houses blocked my view of the horizon until I rounded a bend and saw in the distance a large, tall building obviously European and Christian in inspiration, although no cross adorned its exterior. I had read that at this place in the early seventeenth century a Vincentian priest had built a small hillside church overlooking the adjoining rural community and its rice fields. More than four hundred years later, the scene looked about the same.
The importance of this remote village to early and later missionaries was already familiar to me, yet at this stage of research I did not comprehend the visual impact that the church’s setting and architecture had made on me or, I am sure, others. Only after I had gone to numerous churches in both urban and rural locales in Hebei Province did I begin to have a sense of the rationale behind the various locations selected and what the styles represented to the Vincentian priests who built them and the congregations that worshipped in them. I also began to weigh the impact that the churches of central Beijing and Tianjin, impressive sacred structures with grand architectural lines and long histories, made on Christians and non-Christians alike. I realized that building the Church (the establishment of Catholicism in China) had taken place coterminously with the construction of church structures, and that most studies had chosen to emphasize the former to the neglect of the latter.
I want to acknowledge a few of the many people that have influenced my pursuit of the connections between the Church and its churches. My days at the University of California, Davis, are fondly remembered because Professor Kwang-Ching Liu encouraged me to study matters that pertained to ordinary people and local society. This led me to legal cases involving missionaries and villagers in Jiangxi and then to priests building sacred structures in North China’s countryside. Gratifyingly, other researchers have taken to heart varied rural developments, including those involving Christianity. In particular, Professors Ernest (Ernie) P. Young and R.G. (Gary) Tiedemann have done this, setting the bar high and challenging all of us to do the same. I have benefitted from proximity to the University of San Francisco’s Ricci Institute, which has an excellent library centered on Christianity in China. The institute’s editors, Rev. M. Antoni J. Ucerler, S.J., Ph.D., and Dr. Xiaoxin Wu, have gently guided my project while Mr. Stephen Ford, in his role as editorial assistant, has provided all manner of help with the text and maps. Others in the China studies field, too many for me to properly recognize, continue to redefine the local issues that should concern us.
From figures ranging from Teodorico Pedrini, an eighteenth-century Vincentian priest who established a church in Beijing, to his twentieth-century confreres proselytizing in rural areas, and from modern-day priests of the Congregation of the Mission to Chinese Fathers, come a range of unique documents and materials. Revs. Georges Baldachinno, C.M., and Paul Henzmann, C.M., archivists at their Congregation’s motherhouse, deserve recognition for organizing and cataloguing that which ended up in Paris. Paul’s role warrants special mention because he intimately knew the files and folders, intuitively understood their historical value, and truly enjoyed helping researchers. Although he rests in peace at the Congregation’s crypt at the Montparnasse Cemetery, I want others to be aware of my gratitude for his welcoming manner and friendly guidance. In the U.S., Rev. John Carven, C.M., archivist of the Eastern Province, kindly gave me access to materials housed in Philadelphia, while Rev. Louis Durbin, C.M., did the same for those located in Perryville, Missouri. The latter are now part of the DeAndreis Rosati Memorial Archives at DePaul University Library, Chicago.
I am grateful to the Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship Program, which supported my work at the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. The Vincentian Studies Institute, DePaul University, generously helped me make several trips to domestic and foreign archives as well as undertake field research in China. The institute’s Rev. Edward R. Udovic, C.M., Ph.D., while shouldering countless administrative tasks, has not only found the time for his own scholarship but also the energy to cheer on myself and many others. Rev. John E. Rybolt, C.M., Ph.D., a prodigious and prolific scholar, is amazing for his gracious replies to requests for information. Revs. Hugh O’Donnell, C.M., Henk de Cuijper, C.M., and Pawel Wierzbicki, C.M., demonstrate through personal example different ways Vincentians do mission work—and help researchers. Without naming them, for privacy reasons, I must mention the many Chinese priests who opened their church doors to and had conversations with an unannounced and inquisitive stranger. I especially admire the pastors who “inherited” old Catholic churches because they appreciate them and on a daily basis deal with the challenges of the past as well as those of the present. Collectively, they have assisted and inspired me more than I can ever say. Contact with all these people, whether academic or clerical, regrettably has not perfected my scholarship and the errors that may be found here are mine and mine alone
Last, I thank my family for support, especially my wife. Carol intuitively understands what traveling, researching, and writing means to me and accepts (tolerates?) the frequent trips I have taken in the name of various projects and to see firsthand the objects of my interest. I agree with advice given by my older brother, Leonard, that one should try to make good impressions with those whom we have been in contact and leave with them pleasant memories. I think this is particularly true when visiting other countries. To relatives and friends, curious over the years about what I really do with my time and why so much of it has been spent studying China, I can now say, apparently, this book is it.
Cambria, California
“If you’re lucky enough to be at the beach, you’re lucky enough.”
15 June 2019