Matthias Lu

Matthias Lu

Matthias Lu, 1919-2008 was a Roman Catholic priest and Thomist philosopher.

Biography

Fr. Lu was born in Baoding, which is in the province of Hebei, China, to Paul and Rose Lu. He was ordained a priest in 1942 and left China in 1946 to study at the Pontificia Universita Urbaniana, where he received a Licentiate and, later, a PhD.

In the 1950s, Lu emigrated to the United States and lectured at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana), Saint Bonaventure University (New York), University of Ottawa (Canada), Saint John's University (Minnesota) and others. His longest-running association was with Saint Mary's College of California, a university under the direction of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. He served as professor, researcher, chaplain, and director of the International Saint Thomas Aquinas Center. In 1988, he was named an affiliated member (AFSC) of the Christian Brothers.

Author and Translator

Fr. Lu translated various works by the Apostolic Fathers, Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas into Mandarin and was the author of A Critical Theoretical Inquiry on the Notion of Act in the Metaphysics of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, a work he wrote in Latin.

Select Addresses

"Martyrdom For Truth and Liberty in the People's Republic of China (1949-1996)," The 5th World Congress of Christian Philosophy, Lublin, 1996.

"Human Family and Human Children for a Human World," World Forum of NGOs, Malta, 1993.

"Saint Thomas Aquinas in China," The 8th International Congress of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, 1987.

"The Common Man of Today Needs Saint Thomas Aquinas as a Whole Person," Convention on the 100th Anniversary of Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris at the Angelicum University, Rome, 1979.

Activist

Fr. Lu was a lifelong advocate for peace, families, and for oppressed and imprisoned Catholics in China. His privately published booklet, Bishop Fan is one example of his attempt to educate westerners concerning the state of religious freedom under the Chinese Communist Party. The tract is partially a biography of Peter Joseph Fan, 1907-1992, bishop of Baoding from 1951, as well as an indictment of the Catholic Patriotic Association.