The Chinese scholar class resented the challenge to their doctrinal authority as custodians of Confucian tradition, and published lurid pamphlets attacking the missionaries.
His challenge is to encourage doctrinal unity in the diverse community of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide.
Over against this there is in most cultures a concurrent rivalry with other religions, with their contrary doctrinal claims, and beyond that, the challenges of secular wisdom and unbelief.
It involved delving deep into the devotional and doctrinal resources of Catholicism to withstand the challenges of Protestantism, the scientific revolution and the onset of modernity.
In his account, Mr. Zagorin, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Rochester, moves swiftly from St. Augustine's case for the persecution of heretics to the Protestant Reformers, who challenged the Roman Catholic monopoly on doctrinal authority but not the belief in using coercion to defend true teaching.
In a blatant "Shut up and sit down, sisters" moment, the Vatican's doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, noted, "Occasional public statements by the L.C.W.R. that disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops, who are the church's authentic teachers of faith and morals, are not compatible with its purpose".
Of course, every intellectually serious mode of Christianity has had to respond somehow to these challenges – this was the sense of Stephen Sykes' announcement that we are all liberals today; the particular character of liberal Christianity has been to find a response in accepting the force of the challenges and seeing a profound need for doctrinal reformulation to meet them.
"The sensor revolution will challenge hidden assumptions in a bewildering array of doctrinal fields," writes Kevin Werbach, of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, in a paper entitled "Sensors and Sensibilities".Lastly, consumers may not play ball.
The responsibility to protect is, in a sense, the reverse of its immediate doctrinal ancestor, the "right of humanitarian intervention," which began its life as a direct challenge to state sovereignty.
Few challenged the Sunni assumption of superiority, while the Shias, with their doctrinal emphasis on martyrdom and victimhood, thrived on their own marginalisation.In this section Will the bloodstained Shias resist the urge to hit back?
