"Holy Church Magazine" View Of The Shanghai Catholic School (1912-1938)

Catholic Miscellany was one of the most important and influential Chinese Catholic journal in the period of the Republic of China. It went through the turmoil of China’s political and cultural reformations in the first half of the20th century and kept a comprehensive record of the development of Catholic missionary in China. It recorded all church affairs home and abroad from January1912to August1938, as well as all major events in the secular world. And the magazine was appended with Chinese and foreign Memorabilia. It is not a hyperbole to say that Catholic Miscellany is a treasury of first-hand information for our understanding of the trajectory of Catholic Missionary in the Republic of China.Although it has a strong religious overtone as an institutionalized journal of the Catholic Church, Catholic Miscellany also included articles of high research value. Those articles were concerned with how to bridge the chasm between Catholicism and the Chinese society, and therefore can be used as the lens for our understanding of the Catholic missionary work in China at the beginning of the last century.Founders, editors and principal writers of Catholic Miscellany were not only Catholics, but also influential intellectuals in the society at that time; therefore it is also valuable to investigate their thought and speech. The Jesuit always regarded education as the primary way of preaching, so they took a lot of effort to develop church schools. The magazine even had a special column on education issues, and it covered news and reports in respect with church schools and secular schools.This thesis attempts to collect and analyze all the records of church schools in Shanghai in the Republic of China which were published by The Catholic Magazine, so that to answer the following questions:what was the pedagogical ideal embraced by the church schools and what were their specifities? With these questions answered, the thesis aims to complement the panorama of church school education in Shanghai at that historical period.