提到政教關係，我們很自然會想起"國教" (例如英國聖公會; 泰國佛教等等)， "政教分離" (例如美國憲法第一修正案)，基督教第四次入華與帝國主義的關係, 又或者香港某些政治人物的宗教身份或者某些宗教人士的政治取向等等。
不過, 其實政教關係可以有許多層面。 而往往在最性命攸關的時候, 正正是讓我們反思我們的信仰與國家的關係是什麼一回事。戰爭就是一例。
澳洲政府有個Australia-Japan Research Project網頁，裡面其中一篇文章，提到二戰時，日本出兵巴布亞新畿內亞（當時是澳洲的託管地）。當地來自世界各國的傳教士（天主教及新教），在日軍鐵蹄前, 作出不同的人生抉擇。這不只是去留問題，也不單是應該幫誰不幫誰的問題, 更是敵友問題, 甚至是問一個最根本的問題：我是誰？
如果你是英國傳教士, 日本人來之前最後一班船去澳洲, 你會: (1) 一家大小走人, 留下新畿內亞的教友自己面對淪陷? (2) 送走妻子兒女, 自己留守教堂, 保護新畿內亞的教友? (3) 全家留下來, 這是我的家, 要死就死在這裡?......
如果你是德國傳教士, 有澳洲傳教士因日本入侵要走難, 你會冒險幫他們, 還是向日本人通風報信?
如果你出生在Danzig, 你是什麼人? 日軍當你是敵人 / 盟友 / 中立?
如果你在愛爾蘭獨立前, 出生在愛爾蘭南部, 但又沒有拿愛爾蘭護照, 如何向日軍證明你是中立國人?
又如果你出生在德屬新畿內亞 (一戰後歸英國), 你是日本人的敵人, 還是澳洲人的敵人? 又還是雙方的敵人?
這些故事, 真的可以做"咫尺地球"的題目......
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| Report on historical sources on Australia and Japan at war in Papua and New Guinea, 1942-45 Professor Hank Nelson |
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Most of the writing on the missions in Papua New Guinea during the war has been concerned with just one mission, and even in general histories, such as that by John Garrett, the missions have been dealt with sequentially. The need, then, is for a history that is comparative, that takes particular events and issues and examines the responses of the various missions to them. One critical question faced by all missions was whether or not they would heed the government advice on evacuation. The Methodist wives and children left with other white women; the Methodist nurses stayed on New Britain; Methodist men in the New Guinea Islands stayed; and those in the south-east of Papua left. Within the Catholic missions, men and women, lay and clergy, stayed. The Anglican bishop advised staff to stay, and subsequently seven Anglican missionaries were killed. The Catholic mission had no doubt it had made the right decision although the cost was extravagantly high in lives – nearly 200 Catholic missionaries died during the war. The Catholics, with their strong history of martyrdom nurturing the faith, seemed able to accept the consequence of their actions without prolonged questioning of decisions made in 1941 and 42 and without recriminations. The Anglicans, from 1942, have questioned whether the right decision was made when missionaries, particularly the single women, were encouraged to stay, and whether action might have been taken subsequently to reduce the dangers to some or all the missionaries left on the north coast of Papua and on New Britain. Some Methodists who were instructed or chose to leave their mission stations and survived have worried about whether or not they should have stayed. Their fellow missionaries from Tonga and other South Sea Islanders stayed and survived through troubled times, and some of those Methodists who left the field were working in places never occupied by the Japanese. At the same time the Methodists ask if anything could have been done to rescue the eight ordained men from the New Guinea Islands who were captured and died. These complex questions raise difficult practical and moral issues and are worth extended examination.
Another significant problem faced by all the missions was the relative obligations they owed to church and state. The question of just which nationality missionaries carried with them to New Guinea was difficult to answer, and that was only a preliminary problem. A Catholic priest born in a southern county of Ireland before the formal establishment of the independent state of Eire, but had not obtained a new passport, was born within the British Empire and may have had little evidence that his birth placed him in what was a neutral state in 1942. The Reverend Aloys Darowski of the Sacred Heart Mission, Rabaul, gave his nationality as “Danzig”. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815 Danzig became part of Prussia, at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 it became a “free city”, and in 1939 the Germans incorporated it into the German state. Immediately after the Second World War it became a Polish city and was renamed Gdansk. In the eyes of the Australians in 1941 the Reverend Darowski may have been an enemy alien, a neutral, or an ally. Any Japanese who encountered him the next year would have needed a detailed knowledge of European history and of Darowski’s personal politics and family to know whether he dealt with a nominal friend or enemy. The same subtleties of international law applied to Mother Clotide of Lorraine, the Reverend Bernhauser of “Slovak” and Brother Sauli, an Italian, who presumably changed in status in 1943 after the Italians signed an armistice with the Allies. All these questions of nationality were not simply a result of changes in the political map of Europe. Adolph Wagner was born in German New Guinea and his brother Emil was born in Australia. The Australians decided that Emil was theirs and he served with the Australian army; Adolph, they decided, was an enemy. But the Japanese also decided Adolph was an enemy, and they executed him.
Irrespective of their nationality, missionaries had obligations to the state in which they worked, and to the government in power at any particular time. Methodist missionaries who were clear in their Australian nationality faced an early dilemma. In northern Australia and in the New Guinea islands they were sometimes the only people who could operate a coastwatcher radio on what were otherwise long stretches of exposed coastline, but to accept a radio and a code book and agree to report shipping and aircraft was to make a commitment to the military. In the event of a Japanese landing that would make it difficult for them to claim that they were non-combatants, primarily concerned with the spiritual welfare of their flocks, and should be allowed to continue with their religious duties irrespective of who held civil or military power. But that was just one obvious occasion when a mission had to make a decision. For those missionaries who stayed in the field the decisions were constant: should German missionaries help wounded Australians trying to escape from Japanese occupied areas? Should they report to the Japanese that they knew that Australian coastwatchers were operating in an area? Should they provide the Japanese with knowledge of tracks? What advice should they give to those New Guineans who were members of their church? These questions were acute for the Reverend Johannes Mayrhofer, an Austrian, and the Reverend Bernhardt Franke, a German, on tracks used by Australians escaping from Rabaul. Both helped Australians, but both put their mission work and their lives at risk. The actions of Mayrhofer and Franke would have been a surprise to those Australians who had assumed that all Germans would aid all Australia’s enemies.
A careful re-examination of mission records, crossing the boundaries of particular missions, would reveal much about formal and informal loyalties to church and state, about the behaviour of institutions and people under stress, and how all subsequently dealt with the history of those difficult times.
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