The Catholic Church in Taiwan by Francis K.H. So Beatrice K.F. Leung & Ellen Mary Mylod

Author:Francis K.H. So, Beatrice K.F. Leung & Ellen Mary Mylod
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Singapore

The Culture of Acquiring Tao and Becoming Celestial: Humanism

Chinese folk religion in Taiwan is polytheistic and syncretistic in nature. It is a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and other folk beliefs. Contrary to the creator God in monotheism, some deities of folk religion were once humans who acquired the Tao and attained immortality. A few years ago, a worker who stopped at the Marian grotto in my parish asked, “Is Mary the highest god of Catholicism?” I said: “No, Catholicism is not a religion of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We worship the Most High God, one God in three divine persons. Mary is a human, not god. Jesus Christ is the Son of God and He is God.” Then the worker asked: “Did Jesus achieve the Tao and so become God? And Mary is a human and not God, because she didn’t achieve the Tao?” I replied, “No, Mary is a true acquirer of the Tao and Jesus is the Tao Himself.”

In Chinese folk religion , human heroes who are deified after death , such as the Yellow Emperor (Huang Di), Guan Yu, Yue Fei*, Cheng Cheng-kung* and Mazu, are popularly worshipped by Taiwanese people together with deities of nature and special deities for various walks of life . Do Taiwanese people regard angels and saints of the Catholic Church also as deities?

The word bai (to worship) is commonly used in Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese languages. It has four levels of meaning: (1) Worshiping God, the Lord of heaven (Tian Gong) or the Most High; (2) Worshipping sages, asking for their intercession and blessing, taking them as a model; (3) Worshipping ancestors, cherishing their memory and holding ceremonies to pray for their entry into heaven; (4) Showing respect to others in interpersonal communication, such as koubai (to bow down), baituo (to request a favor), baijian (to pay a formal visit), baishou (to offer birthday felicitations to an elder) and ganbaixiafeng (to admit inferiority.) When using the same word for different objects, we must make its meaning clear. Civilians who do not understand the Catholic Church may misconceive it as a religion that worships the Blessed Virgin Mary, and even consider her as the chief god whom Catholics worship. In addition, local people think that the Catholic Church should learn from folk religion to allow its faithful to burn incense to pay homage to ancestors.

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