ABSTRACT
In 1870 the Church had nearly 400000 converts in the pastoral care of 250 priests. Throughout the century under discussion the Catholic missions always had four or five times the numerical strength of the Protestant missions in China. The focus on conversion and saving souls did not mean that the early missionaries paid no attention whatever to the need for secular reform in the fields of medicine, education and public morality. The columns of the magazine devoted to belles lettres were pedestrian and certain subjects, e.g. philosophy, politics and economics, were deemed useless; the Society concentrated on Western history, geography, natural history, medicine, mechanics and of course theology. Young J. Allen relied on writing and publication as the most effective means of promoting the religious and secular influence of the Church. The European War had destroyed the status quo and swung Chinese nationalism away from its mood of Darwinian introspection into one of Leninist anti-imperialism.
