Guo Kang's plan received a positive response from the priests.

In fact, all branches of the Worship of God have great potential for organization, especially Orthodoxy.

Although in many places a town may not be able to get a standard church, this is because the number of trained priests is insufficient, which is a limitation of objective reality rather than a theoretical problem.

Even without the Purple Horde, the Orthodox Church itself had a relatively complete organizational system. According to the priests, Brother Tian once told his disciples that "where two or three people are gathered together in my name, there will be me among them", so that according to their traditional teachings, three believers can build a church, start organizing and holding religious activities.

The Church has also been trying to explore this theory and organization, even more actively than the Catholic Church in Western Europe. The only problem is that the Orthodox Church was broken up because of military defeats, so these works can only stay on paper for a long time.

The first batch of recruits was less than a thousand, and it was planned that more than a dozen priests and nearly a hundred monks were needed. This number seems to be a high percentage, but it is not difficult to meet the absolute number.

Moreover, these monks are not necessarily formal clergy, because Guo Kang believes that since it is a model army of experimental nature, it will be tested in all aspects at once. In other words, this force is not only an exploration of how to organize the source of new recruits, but also a variety of supporting parts. How the church can better support the military is also one category.

Ordinary monks who join the program are actually trainees. According to the plan, when the second batch of expansions and the establishment of the three brigades were filled, a group of probationary priests would also be stuffed in. It is not only the soldiers and officers who are trained and trained in the army, but also the clergy. They also need to adapt to this new environment, exercise their abilities, and constantly identify problems to help them adjust.

Of course, in this process, the elimination rate will definitely be high. The clergy usually prefer civilian work, and there is a big difference between life in the army and the military. Especially this method is still relatively new, and the people who can't adapt to it may be the majority. In the end, even if only one-tenth of the clergy remained, they were considered successful. Guo Kang is not in a hurry.

"You can go and pick your men. I plan to go to the slums this time, so I will bring a few priests, and the priests have already signed up on the Patriarch's side, and I am going to let them come with me. He thought for a moment and finally said to Father Mikhail: "You just said that you wish I could understand the daily life of ordinary believers, and I agree with it. And I think everyone should have that understanding. ”

"Our priests come from a variety of backgrounds, some grew up in Greece, some in Romania, some in Rus'. The environment they are exposed to is not necessarily the same as here. ”

"Moreover, those who can learn to read and write are basically from a civic background; If you can become a probationary priest, you are also a relatively literate person in your respective diocese. These people and our recruits do not necessarily live in the same environment. ”

"If our priests and priests do not understand the soldiers, do not understand their social environment and cultural background, do not understand the living conditions of their families, do not understand their basic ideas and simple desires, and only know how to read the scriptures, it will certainly not be effective. You have all been missionaries among the people for many years, so you should know very well. ”

"That's true." Fr. André agreed: "If you want to fulfill your duties as a shepherd, you have to put aside your arrogance and try your best to commune, understand and help them, as the priests of the apostolic age did. I think the other brothers would agree with this conclusion. ”

Guo Kang nodded.

He felt Andre was on point. The problem of arrogance is indeed the greatest obstacle to the development of the church.

Nowhere is this more evident than in East Asia. The failure of Roman Catholicism can be summed up in two words: the eye is above the top and the bully is afraid of the hard.

Early in his mission, Matteo Ricci and his Jesuit Society suggested that the traditional liturgy of Seris was doctrinal and compatible. They; But the Dominicans and Franciscans believed that these liturgies and doctrines conflicted, and that Matteo Ricci and others were engaged in heretical acts. The two sides were at loggerheads over a series of doctrinal and cultural disputes, as well as complex political and sectarian struggles that lasted for hundreds of years, and became known as the "Chinese Etiquette Controversy."

Yet from beginning to end, doctrine is not the main reason for this. The church has been preaching for so many years, and there are more and more customs and local religions recognized, so there is no need to dwell on this kind of thing. But because of the partisan dispute between the two congregations, things have come to the point where they cannot be accommodated.

In 1704, the Pope decreed a ban on ceremonial activities such as ancestor worship, worship of holes, and mourning, and sent an envoy to announce the order. The following year, the envoy came to Beijing, and Kangxi personally went out to explain the situation to the envoy, explaining that the rituals such as worshiping heaven and worshiping ancestors were just to express respect and had nothing to do with religion.

The two sides debated the scriptures many times, and also invited the clergy who caused the accident to explain and testify on the spot. However, despite the fact that the Qing Dynasty stated that the liturgy was important and that it was willing to recognize that the other party's god and its own heaven were one and the same, the church was still unwilling to compromise, and the negotiations ended in vain.

In 1707, the papal envoy came to Nanjing and unilaterally announced the ban. Kangxi then arrested the envoy and ordered the Portuguese to hold him in Macau, stating that the missionaries must abide by the "Ricci Rules" or be expelled.

But at this time, Kangxi still hoped to persuade the other party, and sent missionaries to Rome several times to explain the situation to the Pope and defend the dispute over scripture and righteousness. However, the Holy See still insisted on its own opinion, and also detained the French missionaries who served as representatives of the Qing Dynasty, forcing Kangxi to write another letter to intercede before agreeing to release him.

In 1720, when the Pope sent a special envoy to the Qing court for the second time, Kangxi again personally intervened to explain the origin of the tablet of Confucius. However, this argument was still fruitless. In 1721, the official document of the papal ban was sent to Kangxi, and the Qing government gave up and announced a ban on proselytizing.

However, until the Yongzheng era, the ban was not too strict, and the Jesuits made a last compromise effort to reformulate a set of workarounds to replace the "Matteo Ricci rule". But the attempt was also quickly rejected by the church. In 1742 (the 7th year of Qianlong), the Pope officially issued a decree prohibiting missionaries from discussing matters such as liturgy, putting an end to the issue. The ban came into effect throughout the East Asian cultural sphere and essentially ended the history of missionary work.

And the end of this ban is even more dramatic.

In May 1932, an incident occurred in Japan: at Sophia University, founded by the Society of Jesus, an army officer led some students to visit the Yasukuni Shrine Toilet, and some of them were Catholics, who refused to bow on the grounds that it was idolatry. The Japanese military department was extremely dissatisfied with this, and the incident gradually fermented. In October, the Japanese media, which had been instructed to do so, began to report on the incident in a big way, saying that "the Shangzhi University student participated in the refusal incident."

Just a month later, the Holy See announced that visiting the shrine was a ritual of respect and respect, not idolatry, and that Catholics were allowed to participate. The ban, which lasted for 200 years, became invalid in Japan.

In 1934, under Japanese control, the puppet Manchurian government proposed to the Church of Rome that Catholics also participate in activities such as the sacrifice of holes, and the church immediately gave in. The ban on the East Asian continent also expired.

In this case, the original provision has lost its relevance. In 1939, the Pope officially issued a document announcing the official recognition of activities such as ancestor worship and confession worship. The centuries-old liturgical controversy came to an end.

In this way, the problem that Kangxi Yongzheng failed to solve many times was solved by Puyi......

This incident has swelled the face of the church. Anyone who knows this history will not be surprised why the reputation of the Church in the modern East is so poor—it is not only a matter of arrogance towards other civilizations, it cannot even persist in arrogance, and in the end it can only become a clown.

(End of chapter)