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Give Me Jesus

THE STORY OF A MISSIONARY PRIEST

By Christopher Zehnder

"I remember, at the age of six, when I received my first Communion, I told God I wanted to be a missionary." It was when I was leaving his cell that Father Eleutherius said this. Indeed, it was fitting thus to conclude our conversation--to end at the beginning, to close the account of a long and rich life with what inspired it.

Father Eleutherius Winance is a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Andrew in Valyermo. We met after the noon conventual Mass, and for the next four hours we spoke on many topics, including Father's life as a missionary in China.

A native of Belgium, Father Eleutherius entered the monastery of St. André in Belgium in 1927. "When I went there I was just 17 years old," said Father Eleutherius, "and when I went into the novitiate I was just 18. I made my profession on January 15, 1929, my second profession three years later, in 1932."

When in 1925 Rome consecrated the first Chinese Catholic bishop, the abbot of St. André promised to help the fledgling church with missionaries. "In 1927," said Father Eleutherius, "when I went to the monastery, he [the abbot] sent two priests to China. They went to China and started a monastery, in 1929, in Szechuan, near a city called Nanchong.

"In 1933, Father Abbott called me [and told me], 'my dear son, I send you to China.' I said 'yes.' In this time we were not to choose; we were [simply] told [to] go. I was sent to China in 1936. On the fourth of September I left Belgium for Russia [on my way] to China."

The monastery of St. Andrew in China, surrounded by the mountains of Szechuan, was beautiful. The mists that girded the mountains, said Father, filled him with a sense of mystery. The climate, he said, was pleasant for the most part, though for two months in the summer it was unbearably hot. The monastery buildings and cloister were of traditional Chinese architectural design. Though richly beautiful, these buildings, said Father, were uncomfortable--too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter.

The monks in China followed the routine of Benedictine monastic life. "We had the whole office every day," said Father, which in those days was a long affair--nine liturgical "hours"--matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, nones, vespers, and compline--chanted in Latin. Besides this monastic "work" (St. Benedict calls it the opus Dei, the "work of God") the priest-monks were commissioned to start a seminary for the Diocese of Nanchong. "From 1936 to 1937," said Father Eleutherius, "we learned Chinese. We were learning Chinese slowly, but when I left China, [speaking Chinese] was no problem at all, except for my accent. We used to read the Chinese characters, not the romanization. When we arrived in China, the first years, we tried to speak only Chinese--only Chinese or Latin. In 1937, we started the seminary [which] we kept until 1942." In the seminary, the monks schooled about ten seminarians in philosophy and theology.

Besides working in the seminary, Father Eleutherius said he used to help the Chinese parish priests. "Twice a year, for three weeks, I would go from family to family, walking 20 miles, 10 miles, 30 miles, blessing the marriages, giving first communion to the children. It was sometimes very difficult for the people to go to Mass in the city, because of the walk; therefore, twice a year the priests were visiting the families. It was a diocese as big as Belgium! And there were only 25 priests. For me, it was absolutely exciting!"

During that period of missionary labor attempts at a native inculturation of Catholicism were minimal. There was some adaptation: a picture of a chapel in Father Eleutherius' scrapbook shows the introduction of some Chinese design elements, though the basic plan is European. Another picture of the prior, Father Jean Joliet, shows him dressed in a white robe and a cylindrical hat. The monks, too, says Father Eleutherius, while still wearing the black Benedictine habit, soon abandoned the scapular. The Chinese, he said, considered such a seeming extravagance of cloth a sign of opulence. The monks, too, adopted headgear similar to the prior's.

However, for the most part, things remained externally Latin and Western. Churches built in that period were Gothic in inspiration, and the Mass and Office were prayed in Latin. Did the lack of adaptation keep the Chinese from the Church? "No," says Father, "because the Moslems continued to teach in Arabic! The seminarians knew Latin very well." However, he said, "when you hardly understand, it is better to have the Mass in Chinese."

Father Eleutherius said that in his younger days he was more of a "liberal:" he favored a fuller Chinese expression of the Faith. However, he said that in later years he changed. In our conversation, he agreed that such inculturation could be very artificial. European Benedictine missionaries in China, sporting Chinese habits, building monasteries and churches in a Chinese style, mimicking Chinese customs is not unlike Chinese Buddhist monks in America or Europe adopting Benedictince habits, Gothic architecture, and Latin. If the latter seems artficial, why not the former?

But were there converts? "In the schools," says Father, "I converted at least three students and baptized two. One of them went to Louvain and became a great teacher [there]." Father Eleutherius relates that interest in the Catholic Church was growing in China: "You know, when we left China, it was going up. We said, 'I don't understand the Providence of God. So many converts, and so many came at the time of the persecution!' But that is only a question. We [must] say that God knows what He is doing."

Woven into the inexplicable design of Divine Providence was the escalation of long-standing hostilities between Japan and China in July 1937. From 1937 to 1944, China was cut off from the rest of the world, her larger cities devastated by aeriel bombing.

During the war, "we could not communicate with the external world, except when the Americans came," said Father Eleutherius. Though the Japanese never occupied Szechuan "because we were surrounded by high mountains," Father relates that that Japanese carried out frequent bombing raids, even bombing the city of Nanchong.

This war, which became but one theatre of the Second World War, interrupted the work of the monks in Szechuan. "In 1942," said Father Eleutherius, "because of the war, and no money, we were obliged to close the seminary and to find a new way." The bishop of Chengdu (who later joined the Chinese National Church) forced the monks to close the seminary and move the monstery to Chengdu, a major city in Szechuan. "I stayed in the monastery until 1945," continued Father Eleutherius. "Afterwards, in 1948, I was sent, alone, to a Chinese parish with 200 families, and I was there for five months serving in the parish."

However, peace did not come to China with the end of World War II. Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek and Communist forces under Mao Tse-tung raced to occupy the major cities of China. Soon civil war broke out. By 1949, the Communists were victorious, and the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek moved their government to T'aipei, on the island of T'aiwan.

Communist forces occupied Chengdu, said Father Eleutherius, on "the night of Christmas, at three o'clock in the morning, in 1949. They took over Beijing in January of 1949. I was in China under the Communists for two years and two months."

Father relates that because, in the North, the Communist forces behaved like "bandits," they were not well received when they arrived in Chengdu. The students in university however were enthusiastic--they thought the Communists came to bring them freedom. Soon, however, the students discovered their error. "I remember, in March 1950," said Father Eleutherius, "the students said, 'we have no freedom.' The Communists said, 'of course, we protect your freedom.' While I was [in China] there was no study [in the university]; they were studying communism, Mao Tse-tung. When I left China, I think matters continued like that: no education, no science--nothing. There was indoctrination."

"The Communists," continued Father, "attracted the young by what I call stoicism. Virtue, virtue! It is interesting, the doctrine was spiritual, but the metaphysic was materialist." Communism could tempt Christians, said Father because it could appear to be "the love of Jesus Christ, the love of the poor. Finally you discover that the Communists don't like the people, they love the system...

Despite the "nationalist" character of the Communist revolution in China, foreign priests were not immediately expelled. Those that remained, said Father Eleutherius, were "expected to assent" to the creation of a "National" Catholic Church, independent from Rome. "I remember," said Father, "in 1950 I went to the police station (they had called me). They told me I could stay (I was teaching in the school) to serve the people. After that, all the monks had to leave, except myself and another Father."

Though they allowed Father Eleutherius and other priests and religious to remain, the Communists tried to "reeducate" them to accept the National Church. Many were the religious and faithful, however, that remained true to Rome. "We wanted to maintain the unity with Rome, no question," Father said. "Good Christians understood that; no problem at all. I know many Legionaries of Mary were going everywhere to tell the people, 'Be faithful to Rome, be faithful to Rome.'" Many of the faithful, especially the Chinese faithful, were persecuted. "As for us [the foreign religious]," he said, "they did not want to create martyrs. Some [however] went to prison, and some died."

The Chinese Catholics, says Father Eleutherius, "were courageous" in the face of imprisonment and death. One of his students, Brother Peter, spent 27 years in prison. Since 1984 he has resided in Valyermo. Father tells of a young man who, when called to the police station, voluntarily went. "I was preaching maybe twice or three times a week at a chapel belonging to the Redemptorists. I said Mass [there] twice for the housekeepr and for a young man of twenty-three. This young man, during confession, told me, 'I go to the police station.' And he went. Later, I saw the bishop, who told me that this man who went to the police station was in jail for one year. Afterwards he came back with injuries."

"For three months, while Father Prior was in jail, I was still in the monastery, and every Sunday a little girl of about ten or twelve years came and said, 'Give me Jesus.' I would give her five hosts, and she went to the jail to give Holy Communion to the sisters [imprisoned there]. The sisters received the Blessed Sacrament, every Sunday, through a hole in the wall. The Communists never discovered this. The mother superior told me that they used to sing High Mass every Sunday, and to keep a host for the perpetual adoration."

It may seem curious that the Communists, atheist in their philosophy, did not simply destroy religion. "When I was re-educated," said Father Eleutherius, the Communists said "'we want to destroy religion, but it is impossible. Religion will disappear because of science; science will destroy religion.' For the time being they did not succeed. They wanted to control the mind--more than in Russia."

This reasoning lay behind the establishment of a national Catholic church, free from Rome--a church that exists to this day, and whose status in relation to the universal Church is ambiguous. "You know," said Father Eleutherius, "even now [the situation] is very strange; in the National Church 60 bishops are faithful to Rome! It [the National Church] is purely political, it is not theological. Therefore, I let Rome decide what they have to do. For me, of course [in the early 1950s] I was against it, because to belong to the National Church, in that time, meant to be separated from Rome. [However], then the Communists were saying, 'we are not against the pope; we are against Pacelli [Pope Pius XII], because Pacelli followed American policy.' They said they were not against the structure of the Church. Things like that... you know, history is ambiguous!"

In 1952, the Communists condemned Father Eleutherius for saying the Russians are not the friends of the Chinese, for belonging to the Legion of Mary, for not being a member of the National Church, and for not speaking well of the Communists to his students. Father says he told the authorities that "I am not against the government, but I do not accept the philosophy of life of the Communists."

After spending one day in jail, Father Eleutherius was expelled from Szechuan with six priests and six sisters. For 17 days, guarded by six policemen, they traveled to Hong Kong. On a train they were subjected to ridicule. "There were many children on the train," Father remembers. "The police said to the children that the sisters were bad women. I remember I was angry, and I shouted 'No!' The sisters were accused of carrying weapons [under their habits]. You know, if it was true, they would have been shot. Nobody believed it."

Three months after his return from China in 1952, the Abbot of St. André in Belgium sent Father to the college of San Anselmo in Rome to teach philosophy there, where he spent four years. While in Rome, he served as an interpreter for an international commission to look into reports of slave labor in China. For two months in 1954, and again in 1955, he was in T'aiwan. In 1956, the Abbot of St. André sent Father Eleutherius to teach philosophy at St. John's Collegeville, Minnesota, where he stayed for five years.

Meanwhile, the foundation of the priory in Szechuan had been continued in Valyermo, California by Prior Rafael, who followed Jean Joliet. Father Eleutherius came to Valyermo in 1961, serving as novice-master from 1961 to 1965.

From 1961 to 1966, he taught at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles and for the Sisters of Social Service. In 1963 he was asked by Claremont Graduate School to teach philosophy for one year; today, thirty-five years later, he still teaches there every Tuesday. In 1974, at the age of 65, Father went to Bangor, India to teach and preach retreats to the monks and seminarians there, and in 1980, and again in 1984, he went to Zaire to teach philosophy at St. Paul's Pontifical Seminary.

Today, at the age of 89, Father Eleutherius remains active. Besides teaching he goes every Saturday to the Challenger Juvenile Home in the Antelope Valley. "I hear many confessions," he says, and peform "many baptisms. I go there, and it is sad, because I see good kids, you know, who are good when they are in the school, but after that, the gangs... When they are there [the juvenile home], they want to be good, and they come to confession. I hear their confessions almost every Saturday." For the past two years, Father has gone, as well, on Wednesdays, to Mira Loma State Prison in Lancaster to "hear confessions, say Mass, preach."

"Meanwhile," says Father Eleutherius, "my job is to preach. I preach maybe sometimes five times a week." Those who attend the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass in the St. Andrew's Abbey chapel speak of the doctrinal content of Father's homilies. Father himself spoke of it as I left his cell; he pulled out a book from his bookshelf, saying, "Before I prepare my sermons, I read this." It was the Denzinger Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum, an exhaustive compendium of the creeds and doctrinal teachings of the Catholic Church.

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