The Memoirs of Jin Luxian, Vol. 1: Learning and Relearning 1916–1982 (review)

Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian (1916–2013) is one of the most significant figures in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the People’s Republic of China. Yet his role in the struggles and the revival of the Church in China remains controversial. Abroad as well as in his home country, he has received both strong criticism and praise. This first volume is in part an Apologia pro Vita Sua by which Jin hopes to dispel “accusations mischievously included” (p. 3) against him, thereby ceasing to be a sign of contention and turning instead into a beacon of hope and reconciliation for the Chinese Catholic Church.

The book is divided into five parts, each composed of several chapters that deal with the following subjects: Jin’s youth and his family in the Shanghai area; his life as a seminarian and a young Jesuit from 1932 to 1947; his studies between 1947 and 1950; his ministry in Shanghai until his arrest in 1955; and finally the twenty-seven years spent in prisons and re-education camps until his return to the Diocese of Shanghai in 1982. This chronological order is sprinkled with many flashbacks and flashforwards as Jin ponders events and persons that influenced the course of his life.

Apart from his three-year study abroad, Jin’s life was filled with hurtful experiences. Orphaned at a very young age and ignored by most of his relatives, he persevered in his calling to the priesthood. Subsequently, his obedience to his Jesuit superiors placed him several times in harm’s way. The most painful blow came during his detention when he learned that his Jesuit confreres had vilified him and branded him a traitor. Yet in the face of all these adversities, his love for the Jesuit Order remained steadfast.

The last two sections of the book about his return to Shanghai in 1950 and his years in detention are certainly the most important and revealing. They shed a complementary and sometime different light on accounts written by two other Jesuits: Jean Lefeuvre’s eyewitness account, Les enfants dans la ville, chronique de la vie chrétienne à Shanghai 1949–1955 (Paris, 1956), and Paul Mariani’s academic study, Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai (Cambridge, MA, 2011; reviewed ante, 98 [2012], 621–22). Jin writes of the “crimes” he confessed and how, in the recording that was made, he exhorted the people on the outside not to oppose the government. This confession, he writes, was not a betrayal of his loyalty to the Church but just one of the many choices he had to make in his life, all based on the Jesuit principle “To the greater glory of God.” To which he adds: “As long as my actions served the greater glory of the Lord, I went ahead in confidence” (p. 2). It is on the basis of this same principle that he decided, in 1982, to resume pastoral duties in Shanghai. Time will tell if this explanation was enough to satisfy his detractors.

The image that emerges from these memoirs is that of a deeply spiritual clergyman whose faith never wavered. A remarkable thinker well grounded in his Chinese culture and tradition as well as in the Church doctrine, he finds complementarities rather than oppositions between the teachings of China’s ancient sages and those of Christ. As such, he sees himself as walking in the footsteps of Matteo Ricci.

One cannot but be amazed by the many vignettes provided by Jin about significant religious personalities such as Celso Costantini, Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, Hans Küng, Karl Rahner, Lou Tseng-Tsiang, and Albert Decourtray. The same applies to political figures in the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But the bulk of...