In my opinion, "The Silence" contains at least three issues worthy of discussion, which I will share with you here. As a Japanese Catholic, Endo Shusaku gave his own answers to these three questions, and "The Silence" can also be regarded as a kind of journey of his own faith. Martin Scorsese's film is undoubtedly successful in restoring the author's journey.
The first question is also a question often asked by people who have been in contact with Christianity. Does God really exist? If God exists, then why is God always so indifferent in the face of human suffering? The Tokugawa shogunate banned Catholicism. The Japanese people still secretly guarded their beliefs. For this reason, they suffered tremendously, endured various tortures, and were constantly facing death threats. At this time, where did God go? In the face of his suffering people, why does God keep silent? The "Gospel of Matthew" in the Bible says, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you." God is so ubiquitous and omnipresent, but in reality ? Where is God when the disputes in this world are endless? When the guardian of God's faith was martyred for him, and died in misery and desolation without being known to the world, where was God? When people engage in cruel religious wars and conflicts, persecuting heretics and heretics in the name of God, where is God? The ancient Epicurean paradox has been passed down from ancient Greece until today: if God wants to stop "evil" and cannot stop it, then God is incompetent; if God can stop "evil" and does not want to stop it, then God is bad of.
In the face of suffering, Buddhism has a relatively complete answer, but the Christian explanation seems pale. Although there are many explanations in theology, such as the "Do not tempt your God" in the Bible, believers cannot call God and pray for God to appear. Another example is the scholastic philosophy that the existence of the world is a process from imperfection to perfection. The end of perfection is the new world after the doomsday judgment. Before that, people must face suffering and achieve self-salvation. However, for individuals, the official interpretation of theology seems to be out of reach, and even a little bit cold and chilling. For the helpless little beings struggling in the sea of suffering, God’s terrible silence makes people wonder from time to time whether God’s faith is really meaningful. I heard with my own ears that an old priest who has been preaching for more than 30 years still struggles with his faith. Ask someone Does God really love me? I have also seen many people who have given up their faith in the face of suffering and cannot get the voice of God. What should everyone do about God's terrible silence? I am afraid that only each independent individual can give a self-answer on his own journey. The existential philosopher Kierkegaard said in "Fear and Tremor" that only in the endless fear of despair, one can "leap of faith" and achieve the highest passion of faith. Endo Shusaku also gave his own answer in "The Silence": It is in silence and absence that God expresses his existence to mankind.
The second question is about individual and collective issues in suffering. One can die generously for one's own beliefs and principles. But when a group of people suffer for you, will your faith waver? Do you give up your faith in order to understand and save others? In the movie trailer, Nagasaki official Inoue said: The price for your glory is their suffering. What would you do in the face of such accusations? The two priests in the story, Rodrigues and Garupe, have given up their faith in order to understand and save others, and the other has chosen to self-destruct and die together with the church members who were killed in front of him. For the Catholic doctrine, it is sinful to choose anyway: suicide is a sin, so Dante puts the suicide in hell in "The Divine Comedy". Apostasy is even more sin, and will be punished by expulsion. In fact, it is not a religious persecution. How should individuals choose in the face of persecution? This is a common topic among mankind. When Fang Xiaoru in the early Ming Dynasty refused to compromise with the king of Yan Zhu Di and was banished from the ten tribes, Fang Xiaoru could go to death with great justice and generosity. However, how innocent his ten tribes were! When Fang Xiaoru was in tears when he saw his brother Fang Xiaoyou dying on the execution ground, Fang Xiaoyou said, "Brother, why bother with tears, take righteousness and Chengren here. After thousands of years of Huabiao's stigma, the spirit of travel is still home." What kind of sadness is this? I often think that Fang Xiaoru sacrificed his ten clan in order to achieve his reputation. What a terrible reputation it is! At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Wen Tianxiang was loyal to the Song Dynasty and was killed by Kublai Khan. Before his death, he wrote "The Song of Righteous Qi" Mingzhi. However, Wen Tianxiang let his younger brother become an official in the Yuan Dynasty and saved his family. Perhaps this is a kind of discount. In the method?
Of course, we can’t overly condemn the victims who insist on their beliefs in their own principles and cause their closest people to suffer disaster, because they are weak and heroes of stubborn resistance, and persecute them and go further. Powerful people who persecute people around them are despicable. However, in the face of bloody reality, how should one choose? In the movie, some church members choose to be martyred, others choose to trample on the statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, spit on the cross and confess afterwards, some choose to apostasy, some choose to self-destruct, which choice is our true Which choice should be promoted and commemorated? This is probably something that we cannot answer when sitting in our study and office in peace times. "Silence" puts this cruel topic in front of everyone, which is one of the shocking manifestations of the work.
The third question is also a question that we Orientals often think about, and that is the conflict between Eastern and Western cultures. In "Silence", through the words of Nagasaki officials, through discussions between Ferreira, the former diocese who has given up his faith, and Rodrigues, who has not given up his faith, it expresses the concept of the Orientals in the cultural conflict. For Western Catholicism, Japan is a "swamp" that cannot bloom and bear fruit. The Catholic theological concepts cannot be popularized and become part of Japanese culture. When Buddhist monks looked at Rodrigues with cold eyes, when Ferreira persuaded Rodrigues in a Buddhist monastery, and when Ferreira pointed to the sun and said that this is the Japanese "son of God", Rodrigues emphasized that the universal values of Christianity/Catholicism seemed to be true. So pale and weak, it's completely emotional. This is probably not just the struggle and confusion of Endo Shusaku as an Oriental himself, but it is also the struggle and confusion of all of us Orientals facing the invasion of Western values. How can the purely Christian concepts of original sin, the elect, redemption, the incarnation, and the Trinity take root in the land of the East? Even if Japanese villagers persisted in martyring for Catholicism, how much do they know about Christianity? Villagers think that their children have gone to heaven after being baptized. The paradise known to the female villager Monica (Haru) played by Komatsu Nana is a paradise that has no hard work, no taxes, and is much happier and more beautiful than the poor countryside. For this reason, she is not afraid of death (even with some expectations). The excitement and joy of the villagers seeing the idols, rosary beads, and crosses made the priests worry that these villagers had fallen into idolatry. In other words, how much of what these villagers liked was the doctrine of Christianity and God itself. Most of them are those formalistic objects attached to Christianity. What the Japanese believers in the 16th and 17th centuries insisted on was probably not the orthodox doctrine in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, right?
During the Warring States period, Japan’s traditional Buddhism weakened, and a large number of Catholics appeared, and there were even a series of Catholic daimyos (the so-called Geely Shidan daimyo), such as Otomo Zonglin, Konishi Governor, Kuroda Kanbei, and Kamio. Township. (Akechi Mitsuhide, the bald beautiful daughter Tamiko, is also a Catholic. Speaking of this, my Taige aspiration attribute has been turned on again, so I will stop now.)
Later Hideyoshi Toyonari ruled the rivers and lakes. In order to prevent the Spanish and Western culture from eroding Japan and breaking off diplomatic relations with Spain, Catholicism was subsequently banned. In the early years of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Shimabara Rebellion broke out in which the Catholics fought against the shogunate. After that, the Tokugawa shogunate implemented a strict lock-up policy and prohibition of religion. In order to balance the domestic Buddhist power, the shogunate government vigorously promoted Confucianism and allowed Confucianism to prevail in Japan. Flourish. In this new context, Catholicism simply cannot continue to take root in Japan, and can only choose to retreat. Although there have been secret Catholics in Nagasaki during the ban on religion in the Shogunate for more than two hundred years, Catholics and Protestants are still a minority in Japan until today, which proves that Catholic culture is not suitable for Japan after the Tokugawa Shogunate. society. The universal value of Christianity claimed by Rodrigues does not seem to be popular in Japan. The same was true in China. Almost at the same time when the Catholic Church in Japan was flourishing, there were also many Catholics in Ming Dynasty in China, and there appeared religious scholar-bureaucrats like Xu Guangqi. Later in the Kangxi period, because the Catholic Church forbids believers to worship Confucius and their ancestors, the "Chinese and Western Etiquette" controversy broke out, and the Catholic forces were expelled from China by the Emperor Kangxi.
As an Easterner, how to find a balance between Western beliefs and Eastern traditions, or, more generally, how to find coexistence and harmony between Western values and Eastern traditions, is still an unsolved problem.
So much to talk about these three questions. "Silence" is a good movie, but we need to interpret it from human nature and from culture. Although the original novel of this film was written by Catholics, the director of the film was a Catholic of Italian descent, and the film premiered in the Vatican, but I think this is not a Catholic film, but a humanistic film with profound thoughts. . The three questions I mentioned above do not actually have standard and authoritative answers. They can only be left to everyone's own thinking.
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