The Research On The Relationship Between Catholics And Non-believers About Apostolic Vicariate Of Zhili Province Southeast(1856-1949)

From 1856, the Church of Rome formally recognized the Apostolic Vicariate of Zhili province southeast as one of the Catholic Diocese in Zhili Province, and the parish became the key area of the missionary activities. During dozens of years when Catholic missionary work was conducted in the Apostolic Vicariate of Zhili province southeast, the Catholicism created a large parish and built many churches, governing church affairs of 36 counties in southeastern Zhili with a large number of followers. During the missionary work, there were days when the Church developed smoothly and got on with the residents in peace, and the days when populace or official vs. church contradictions and conflicts happened, even church cases. Its development was influenced by China’s social background at that time and carried obvious local characteristics, which was the most representative in Zhili, even across the whole country.In the spread of Catholicism across the Apostolic Vicariate of Zhili province southeast, interactions and conflicts between the foreign missionaries and local Catholics or ordinary people are an important part of the history of the Catholicism in the parish. Studies on the development of the Catholicism since it was introduced into the parish, changes in policies and attitudes, as well as the relationship with the non-believers will provide historical experience in treating Catholics in the parish and handling the relationship between Catholics for the government and people in the construction of harmonious society at present.I have conducted the studies on the development of Catholicism and the relationship between Catholics and non-believers in the parish from the Ming and Qing Dynasties to 1949 by collecting and analyzing the existing materials, aiming to investigate the Catholic activities in the specific social and historical background of a region, so as to have a comprehensive view of the interactive relationship between the Catholic Church and the public. With the spread and development of the Catholicism in Xianxian as a starting point, I focus on exploring the interactions between Catholics and non-believers, including the local-condition-adapted policies made by the Catholic Church to attract followers, the harmonious relationship with the public, and the conflicts with Chinese rural traditional culture as a foreign culture, of which the main forms are endless church cases in all sizes. Therefore, while focusing on the relationship between Catholics and non-believers, this paper also makes some analysis on the causes of each type of cases in the Apostolic Vicariate of Zhili province southeast.The studies of this topic will enable us to explain the history of Catholicism spread and development in the Apostolic Vicariate of Zhili province southeast with the local historical documents, which can be used as a supplement to the local church history and enrich the local Catholicism research in Hebei province academically.China is now building a harmonious socialist society in an all-round way, and to deal with the ethnic and religious issues properly is also one of the key points to the construction of the socialist harmonious society. Therefore, I intend to choose a typical area for the investigation of the relationship between the Church and the public in the history of the modern Catholicism by studying the history and based on the reality, so as to benefit the research on the contemporary Catholic issues.