Inkulturasi (Katolik)

Matteo Ricci adalah seorang Yesuit, Adam Schall von Bell and others had successfully introduced Christianity to China. Ricci and Schall were appointed by the Chinese Emperor in Peking to be court mathematicians court astronomer and even Mandarin. The first Catholic Church was built in Peking in 1650. The emperor granted freedom of religion to Catholics. Ricci had adapted the Catholic faith to Chinese thinking, permitting among others the cultic veneration of ancestors, which he described as a mere cultural practice. The Holy See disagreed, deeming the veneration an act of worship and hence idolatry, and forbade any adaptation in the so-called Chinese Rites controversy in 1692 and 1742. The Chinese emperor felt duped and refused to permit any alteration of the existing Christian practices. The Church experienced missionary setbacks in 1721 when the Kangxi Emperor to outlaw Christian missions. According to Franzen, "The Vatican policy was the death of the missions in China."