AHC: Significant Catholic population in China

Challenge: With a POD after 1513, the challenge isto have at least 10% of the Chinese population at least self-identifying as Catholic in 2013. Bonus points if it is 15% or higher.
 
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Your title says China, but the description says Korea. Anyway Korea is 25% Christian in OTL.
 

scholar

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Challenge: With a POD after 1513, the challenge isto have at least 10% of the Chinese population at least self-identifying as Catholic in 2013. Bonus points if it is 15% or higher.
A more successful Ming Dynasty would almost inevitably result in significant Catholic presence, the church got the last of the fleeing Ming remnants to convert to catholicism; the nobility was highly receptive of it and there were entire communities known for conversion. It was growing in popularity before the Ming fell, once again began to rise during the Qing before it was outright outlawed and everyone who refused to become an apostate became a slave or expelled from the country, and suffered again with the people's republic of china. Catholicism always begins to grow before something happens to smash it down to size, only for it to pick back up again.

Its not hard to simply prevent one or two of these harsh persecutory periods and allow Catholicism to proselytize freely. Catholicism, and christianity in general, are growing forces in China even to this day.
 
This breaks the POD limit from the OP a little, but I'm reading a book about Christianity in China and it mentions some 13th century Franciscan missions - evidently, there was an Archbishop of Beijing during the late Yuan dynasty, and then the whole Church presence sort of faded into obscurity until the Jesuits appeared at the end of the Ming years.

Anybody have any ideas on how to preserve and expand the Franciscan presence? Were the early Ming responsible for its disappearance (nationalist backlash after the overthrow of the Mongols) or was there some other factor beyond crap, that's a long way away from Rome on foot or hoof at work?

As it was, the Church 'lost' around three centuries of evangelization. How might it have evolved if John of Montecorvino hadn't been a missed chance but instead an early Matteo Ricci?

(I have the vague idea for a Catholic dynasty, founded by a populist rebel from some Catholic village, replacing the Ming instead of the Qing, but that's probably pushing things into ASB territory, isn't it?)
 
Your title says China, but the description says Korea. Anyway Korea is 25% Christian in OTL.

Catholics are Christians, but Christians are (not all) Catholics.

I heard the majority of korean christians are protestants of various branches.. and there is those 'moonists'...
 
As long as the Catholic missionaries unwilling to accept traditional practices like honoring one's ancestors, then it won't happen.

The Catholic missionaries must also be willing and sincere to prove themselves that they are not henchmen of Vatican.

Wasn't the reason why they got thrown out because of certain pope wanting to meddle in China's affair ?
 
As long as the Catholic missionaries unwilling to accept traditional practices like honoring one's ancestors, then it won't happen.

The Catholic missionaries must also be willing and sincere to prove themselves that they are not henchmen of Vatican.

Wasn't the reason why they got thrown out because of certain pope wanting to meddle in China's affair ?

In the 1930s, the Vatican became rather complicit with the Japanese. Like, regurgitating Japanese propaganda at their masses, holding special masses to celebrate the "liberation" of Nanking, and even asking for Amaterasu's blessing. Pius XII permitted Confucian rites in 1939 because he wanted to grant legitimacy to Manchukuo, whose state ideology was heavily based on Confucian teachings on submission to wise rulers. It wasn't because of a sudden respect for another culture.

At least the Vatican has the excuse of being naive and threatened for what they did in Europe. A lot of non-Communist Chinese haven't forgotten this.

IMO the post-war Chinese government (Nationalist or Communist) should have entirely banned the Catholic Church altogether.
 
In the 1930s, the Vatican became rather complicit with the Japanese. Like, regurgitating Japanese propaganda at their masses, holding special masses to celebrate the "liberation" of Nanking, and even asking for Amaterasu's blessing. Pius XII permitted Confucian rites in 1939 because he wanted to grant legitimacy to Manchukuo, whose state ideology was heavily based on Confucian teachings on submission to wise rulers. It wasn't because of a sudden respect for another culture.

At least the Vatican has the excuse of being naive and threatened for what they did in Europe. A lot of non-Communist Chinese haven't forgotten this.

IMO the post-war Chinese government (Nationalist or Communist) should have entirely banned the Catholic Church altogether.

No offence, but is there a chance there was also propaganda and slendering from Protestant ministers, missionaires and all? they where in China too, and clashed for sure at times.

I have never heard of this, and it's possible indeed considering what all happened by the European side of WWII, but I would be warry of some sources.
 
No offence, but is there a chance there was also propaganda and slendering from Protestant ministers, missionaires and all? they where in China too, and clashed for sure at times.

I have never heard of this, and it's possible indeed considering what all happened by the European side of WWII, but I would be warry of some sources.

Yep, neither the Protestant nor Catholic missionaries were clean. So much so that one of my relatives went to a school run by Protestant missionaries (by a church which is today famously mainline and liberal) and was taught to view the Catholic Church as a devilish cult! I think one of the few good things Mao did was to expel all these people.

Quite a few Protestant missionaries "went native" in China, and some even joined the Communist Party. I don't know of any Catholic missionaries going native, though. The Catholic Church parroted the Japanese line about the invasion of China being a fight against the Communist Party of China (though precisely the Japanese invasion breathed new life into the near-dead CPC).

I don't think the Vatican can be blamed for cozying up with European fascists given the circumstances at the time; at worst they're guilty of naivety. Their cozying up with Imperial Japan cannot be excused.
 
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