“With the arrival of Catholicism in China, missionaries and Chinese believers became involved in the issue [of retribution], partly to refute the anti-Catholic allegation of God’s nonexistence or injustice,” wrote the author Xiao Qinghe, an associate professor at Peking University in Beijing.

The core difference between Catholicism and the Chinese ideologies was the idea that evil deeds were ultimately forgiveable because the Christian God allowed people to ascend to heaven if they successfully repaired the damages created by their previous sins.

For example, an example of a Chinese belief came from Confucianism, the idea that people accumulated small “goods” and small “evils” throughout their lives, and much of life was about avoiding a “great evil” while working towards a “great good”.

“In other words, the cultivation of virtue has nothing to do with whether heaven or hell exists,” wrote Xiao.

Additionally, one Confucian belief was that future generations were responsible for resolving past mistakes. So, not only do the evils and goods of life accumulate over time, but they also affect the lives of descendants.

Anti-Catholics at the time argued that begging God for mercy deprived followers of the “joy of vivacity” and the “joy of being alive”. They became frustrated with the Catholic idea that redemption cannot be found outside of the church, seemingly leaving good non-believers in limbo.

The paper quoted Xu Dashu, an anti-Catholic leader, who argued: “If you are good in your whole life and do not flatter God, it is useless to be good; if you are evil in your whole life and flatter God in your whole life, all evil will be gone.”

Additionally, Xu expressed doubts about confession, arguing that it is simply a flattery of God, which proves that the person’s heart is not pure.

Buddhists at the time also had problems with confession, saying that their version of confession was meant for the people not to perform evil again.

“It does not mean the removal of sins, while in Catholicism, it means the removal of sins by praying to Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and then one would go to heaven,” wrote Xiao.

Centuries before the advent of Catholicism in China, Buddhists introduced the theory of karma into the country. In its simplest form, positive and negative retribution comes from the person themselves and not gods.

This belief came into conflict with the Catholic idea of original sin, in which humans inherit a taint brought upon humanity by Adam’s decision to eat the forbidden fruit and receive expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

To some Buddhist scholars at the time, the idea of original sin was unfair to humans, and they argued we are in control of our ability to develop good or bad karma.

The Buddhist ideas of karma also diverged from Catholic conceptions of heaven and hell.

While Catholics offer the reward of a physical location – heaven for a life well lived and hell for a sinful life – Buddhists believe that their version of heaven and hell are caused by karma. Heaven and hell are not external, they argue, but rather manifestations of our own consciousness based on how we live our lives.

Yang Guangxian (1597–1669), an anti-Catholic, went as far as to say the “Lord of Heaven” was a “villain who invites people to fawn over him”.

As for the Catholics, they brushed up against the idea that crimes or charities committed in our lifetime are passed to future descendants, whether through reincarnation (Buddism) or dynastic retribution (Confucianism).

Ferdinand Verbiest, one of the most important Chinese missionaries during the 17th century, argued that evils committed “in this world” should also be punished in this world.

Author Xiao wrote that Verbiest argued: “It is only when the retribution is dealt out in this life that it can promote the good and punish the evil.”

Finally, Verbiest argued that men could not judge good and evil and that without God’s judgment we would not be dissuaded from committing sins.

But while the religions had ideological disagreements, they also shared similarities.

Most importantly, while they disagreed about how retribution was dealt with, their concepts of good vs evil behaviour were broadly similar. For example, Catholicism and all the major Chinese ideologies view murder as a particularly egregious crime.

Additionally, Catholicism and the major Chinese ideologies all placed responsibility for behaviour at the individual’s feet. They believed in the intentionality of behaviour but simply diverged in how the consequences were dispensed.

The new ideas brought by Catholicism created an outside element that, Xiao wrote, eventually made the Chinese ideologies more dynamic while promoting dialogues between the Sino and Western religions.

“One of the most important influences was that the arrival of Catholicism in the late Ming Dynasty encouraged some scholars to think about the religious aspects of Confucianism in order to strengthen the role of Confucianism in moral education and cultivation,” Xiao wrote.