News from China II

Sandro Magister at www.chiesa has chimed in with his usual excellent work.  Aside from his usual links to the primary sources, he provides a nice summary of the latest happenings in the relationship between the ChiComs and the Holy See including this description of the genesis of the recent agreement:

That day, [Francis'] touchdown in New York on his way to Philadelphia coincided with the landing of Chinese president Xi Jinping, who was expected at the United Nations. Everything had been calculated for the two to cross paths “accidentally” at the airport and exchange a greeting. Xi was aware of this ardent desire of the pope, but in the end he let it drop and the meeting did not take place.

From that moment on, however, the secret contacts between the Vatican and Beijing underwent an acceleration. In October and then in January a delegation of six representatives of the Holy See went to the Chinese capital. And in April of this year, the two sides set up a joint working group that now seems to have come to an understanding over a point that the Vatican takes very seriously: the appointment of bishops.

Read it all for details on the excommunicated bishops of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and their being brought into the fold under the deal.

Magister notes:

The example that is brought up most often is that of Vietnam, where the candidate for bishop is proposed by the Vatican but the government can veto him, and then on to other candidates until the government approves one of them.

But for China, the solution of which Cardinal Tong appears to have knowledge sees the roles reversed. The candidate will be selected and proposed to the Vatican by the Chinese episcopal conference. Only that this conference is a creature of the communist party, completely at the beck and call the regime, devoid of “underground” bishops and with one of the excommunicated eight as its president.

Let us pray for our Chinese brethren as they enter this brave new world created by the Holy Father.

News from China

In recent days, relations between the Holy See and the People's Republic of China have been in the news.  This column by Anthony Clark at Catholic World Report is as good a recap as any of recent events.  The column describes Cardinal Tong's statement, "the pope will choose from a list of proposed candidates for ordination to bishop by China’s bishops and state authorities, which would finally normalize how bishops are selected and ordained in China."

Clark quotes from the statement,

Fortunately, after working for many years on this issue, the Catholic Church has gradually gained the reconsideration of the Chinese government, which is now willing to reach an understanding with the Holy See on the question of the appointment of bishops in the Catholic Church in China and seek a mutually acceptable plan. . . . The Apostolic See has the right to choose from the recommended list the candidates it considers as most suitable and the right to reject the candidates recommended by a bishops’ conference of China and the bishops in the provinces under it.

Hmm.

Mr. Clark goes on to describe Cardinal Zen's reaction.  Zen, the long time opponent to any compromise, wrote a response posted by AsiaNews.it. The title says it all: “My concerns over China-Holy See dialogue and repercussions on Chinese Church”

The end of Mr. Clark's column is a brief summary of  Sino-Holy See relations.

The point that stands out is Mr. Clark's comparison to Vietnam, "but it should be recalled that the Vatican’s proposed agreement with China is comparable to agreements made with communist Vietnam quite some time ago. In June of 2010, Pope Benedict XVI established a similar form of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, and the Church there has continued to flourish under a circumstance that Pope Francis is now proposing with China."

Long time readers know where I stand vis-a-vis the ChiComs.  They are not to be trusted.   Mr. Clark's comparison to Vietnam is on the surface apt due to PRChina and Vietnam being communist, but whether the Church is truly prospering there is debatable.

Will the Pope Sell Out to Red China?

As with remarriage and communion, the issue of the appointment of bishops in Red China seems to be one where Francis says one thing, but his underlings do another at the expense of Benedict's past actions that Francis has claimed to support fully.  Read this from Sandro Magister and try to discern for yourself just where the Holy Father is going with relations with the PRC.

Chinese Regards to Pope Francis

New York Times

Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said that Beijing hoped the pope, who was elected on Wednesday, would work with Chinese officials on improving relations. But, she said, the Vatican “must stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, including in the name of religion."

She also said the Vatican must sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan before ties with Beijing improve. China considers Taiwan a renegade province that is part of its territory.

Sadly, with the current regime of China, I don't see much room to improve relations.  Can the Holy See do much of anything besides either take a hard line or capitulate to Chinese demands?

But perhaps there is hope for improvement on horizon.  China has only just recently installed its Fith Generation of leadership.  And I've read there is hope for real political change with the Sixth Generation.  That is still at least a decade away, though.

B16: Close in prayer to the Church in China

TUESDAY, 24 MAY, IS dedicated to the liturgical memorial of Our Lady, Help of Christians, who is venerated with great devotion at the Shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai: the whole Church joins in prayer with the Church in China. There, as elsewhere, Christ is living out his passion. While the number of those who accept him as their Lord is increasing, there are others who reject Christ, who ignore him or persecute him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). The Church in China, especially at this time, needs the prayers of the universal Church. In the first place, therefore, I invite all Chinese Catholics to continue and to deepen their own prayers, especially to Mary, the powerful Virgin. At the same time all Catholics throughout the world have a duty to pray for the Church in China: those members of the faithful have a right to our prayers, they need our prayers.

AFP: China calls for Vatican ‘actions’

CHINA YESTERDAY CALLED FOR “concrete actions” from the Vatican to help improve relations, after Pope Benedict XVI urged Chinese bishops to resist pressure from Beijing and stay true to Rome.

“We hope that the Vatican can be clearly awhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifare of the fact that China practises freedom of religious belief and of the continuous development of China’s Catholic Church,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters.

Ms Jiang added that Beijing hoped the Vatican would “create conditions for the development of China-Vatican relations through concrete actions”.

A New Voice in the Holy See's China Policy

Sandro Magister's latest piece talks about the recent events in the People's Republic of China and the new secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Archbishop Savio Hon Taifai. Magister includes a translated interview of the archbishop with Avvenire.

The two sides are manned principally by Father Jerome Heyndrickx and Cardinal Zen. The former takes a compromising approach and the later not so much. Magister sees Hon as occupying a position that is much closer to that of the cardinal's than Heyndricks, though Archbishop Hon is not in lockstep with Zen. Reading the interview provided, Archbishop Hon's answers are on the whole prudent and level-headed.

More to come, I'm sure.

The Zero Sum Game

It's been awhile since I've written about the People's Republic of China (mainland, communist China). The Holy Father issued his letter back in 2007 and after that, things in the Far East dropped off my radar screen.

Now we have this: China: One Bishop's About-Face Reignites the Dispute between Bertone and Zen by Sandro Magister.

I'll sum up very briefly: The secretary of state Cardinal Bertone believes that now is the time to come out of the shadows, even if it means accepting the directions of the communist regime; this is based on the Pope's phrasing on how the clandestine Church is not a natural state. He makes other points as well on the state of the clergy in China. Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong on the other hand believes that the Pope's words about the clandestine Church not being a normal feature of Church life, the Pope means that the Church should continue until the abnormal circumstances of communist oppression are at an end.

My first instinct in this matter is to go with Cardinal Zen and give nothing to the communist Chinese.

Just as it is easy to connect to the clandestine community Bertone's statement that "a truly Eucharistic community cannot retreat into itself, as though it were self-sufficient, but it must stay in communion with every other Catholic community."

This point of Bertone's quoted by Magister is on the outside convincing, but I am reminded of various instances throughout history when Christians have been persecuted or when a small, orthodox faction of Christians have been at odds with a far larger faction of heterodox Christians that have the backing of the State. Does communion with other Catholic communities trump the freedom of the Church to govern its own affairs? I would say no.

Backsliding in Mainland China

We haven't hit on ChiComs lately, but Sandro Magister quotes at length a piece by the founder of Asia News.

The main points:
The bishop of Beijing, who was approved by the Vatican, has been giving speeches that appear to place him under the thumb of the Communists. As summarized by Magister:

In fact, the new bishop, Joseph Li Shan (in the photo) whom cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone had hailed as "a very good and suitable person," is increasingly stringing together actions submissive toward the regime. To such an extent that many among the faithful already consider him a "traitor."

The quoted article by Father Bernardo Cervellera points out that a second letter sent by Cardinal Bertone to the Chinese bishops was seen as weak and that many younger bishops of the official church have no role models and do not remember a time without Communist control. Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong has spoken out to sound the alarm on this backsliding.

The cardinal continues: "So, martyrdom has become a stupid thing? That’s absurd; a short-sighted view! Reaching compromises might make sense as a short-term strategy but it cannot last forever. Being secretly united with the Holy Father and at the same time affiliated with a Church that declares itself autonomous from Rome is a contradiction."

Finally, Cardinal Zen ends with a fraternal appeal: "Dear brother bishops and priests, look at the example of Saint Stephen and all the martyrs of our history! Remember that suffering for the sake of the faith is the basis of victory even if right now it might appear as defeat."

The open Church's bishop

The Atlantic Monthly has in its July/August issue an article on Jin Luxian, the longtime open bishop of Shanghai and more recently the de jure bishop of that diocese. The article online requires a subscription.

Included here are several paragraphs that aren't necessarily in order along with commends.

Under this policy, Jin was asked to take up his old responsibilities as rector of Shanghai’s seminary. Though the CPA would be looking over his shoulder, he saw the necessity: In all of China, there were at most 400 priests to serve 3 million Catholics. He believed that if the Church was to have any chance of survival, China would need young, well-educated priests, even if they were subjected to Communist propaganda during their training. Through a “foreign friend,” Jin requested permission from Rome. The response was that he should “wait for the collapse” of the Communist Party, then reopen the seminary. “They underestimated the Chinese Communist Party,” says Jin. And so, after “much prayer,” he acted in what he believed to be the best interests of China’s Catholics. “I didn’t obey the directive of Rome. I said, ‘Let the Catholic Church survive.’”
[...]

In conversation, Jin exhibits few doubts about his decisions, but occasionally his answers turn defensive. During one of our interviews, I asked about his impressions of the underground Church. He began to answer, then suddenly interrupted himself. “[The members of the underground Church] say they are loyal to the pope,” he said. “But I am as loyal as them. Why become bishop? I led the [Chinese] Catholics to pray for the pope and even printed the prayer! I reformed the liturgy. Before me, it was all in Latin. But the underground Church did nothing. If I stayed with them, I would do nothing, too.”
[...]

The last few sentences are interesting given the shifting liturgical landscape in the West. Ditching Latin and reforming the liturgy might not be the best things to take credit for when discussing one's achievements as bishop.

Then, as now, Beijing had two conditions for normalizing relations with the Vatican: the severing of the Vatican’s diplomatic ties with Taiwan (and as a consequence, the transfer of its embassy to the mainland) and an agreement not to interfere in China’s internal affairs. The Vatican has indicated that it’s prepared to meet the Taiwan condition, but the second issue, which encompasses the selection of bishops, is more difficult. Informally, the Vatican might be satisfied with a compromise similar to the process used to nominate Xing in Shanghai. However, public declarations to the contrary, it’s been suggested that both the government and the underground Church have a tacit interest in preventing a deal, since it would inevitably empower the open bishops and their conference, diminishing the government’s influence and the underground Church’s prestige.

Whether an immediate way can be found through the impasse may depend on what Benedict XVI has to say in a promised letter to Chinese Catholics. Leaked reports and the impressions of a source close to the drafting of the letter suggest that it will call, as John Paul II did, for reconciliation between the open and underground churches, and focus largely on pastoral concerns. Ultimately, it’s expected to portray China’s Catholics as largely united after a half century and to acknowledge that any diplomatic solution will need to accommodate both the vitality of the open Church and the struggles of the underground one.

Which the letter did..

The article as a whole is a biographical piece on Jin and his struggles. The main thrust seems to be Jin's efforts at creating a Chinese Church, even if it meant collaborating with Beijing. The main 'bad guys' seem to be Rome and the underground Church itself: it was described as both heroic and to blame for Catholicism's backwardness before Jin reformed everything.

It's on newsstands now, go check it out.

More on the letter

"Love and courtesy of this kind should not, of course, make us indifferent to truth and goodness."
-Second Vatican Council, as quoted in the Holy Father's letter to the Chinese

I read through most of the Holy Father's letter. I am quite pleased with its substance. Father Z made the point that, "A recurring theme in the first part of the letter is suffering." I myself am pleased that my hope that the message would be, "gut it out and stay true to the Church, your reward will be in the Kingdom of Heaven" proved true.

The letter

LETTER
OF THE HOLY FATHER

POPE BENEDICT XVI

TO THE BISHOPS, PRIESTS,
CONSECRATED PERSONS
AND LAY FAITHFUL
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Or it should be, "The Government of the People's Republic of China and whoever can get this illegally".

I skimmed it. I don't see anything about moving the nunciature. Bravo!

Letter to the Chinese: Tomorrow

Catholic World News:

The Pope's letter, believed to be about 30 pages long, will retrace the recent history of Catholicism in China, including the persecution of the Church under the Maoist regime and the recent conflicts between the "underground" Catholics loyal to the Holy See and the "official" Church sanctioned by the Beijing regime. The Holy Father will emphasize that the Church is indivisible, and explain the Vatican's insistence on independence from government control.

The Pope's letter is addressed to "the bishops, the priests, the religious, and the lay faithful" of China, the Vatican said. The notice alerting journalists to the publication of the papal message was issued on June 29 although the Vatican press office was closed for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.

My favorite topic and I'm sure one readers out there get tired of me harping about. The article doesn't say what if anything the letter will have on relations with the ChiComs versus relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan). I point out yet again that cutting ties with Taipei in order to better relations with the PRC is pointless. The PRC wants a photo op, that's all it wants. If we look at Sino-US relations since human rights was delinked from trade status, we see that improving trade relations has done nothing to help the poor souls in the bamboo gulag. Now that Sodano is gone, hopefully we'll see some realism in the Vatican along the lines that moving the nunciature will do nothing to help in the long term.

What the letter should say is simple: gut it out and stay true to the Church, your reward will be in the Kingdom of Heaven.

A bit about China

Feria in both calendars

Last week, Sandro Magister came out with a piece on the People's Republic of China. The sum of it is that the government wants better relations with the Holy See and the state-run Catholic associatioin wants to save its fief from being left behind.

Magister's comments are interesting and they mirror what I've been saying all along, to wit, the senior leadership of the People's Republic could care less about the Catholic Church except insofar as the Church affects its hold on power. As it stands right now, with a clandestine Church that is larger than the official Patriotic Association, the senior leadership's best option is making the clandestine Church legitimate at the expense of its corrupt and pointless official association.

Thus, in order to bring the Catholic population in China under the aegis of the harmonious society as well as score the biggest foreign policy coup in quite awhile by restoring relations with the Holy See, the senior leadership is quite prepared to do away with the Patriotic Assocation. Of course, what we see now is the turf war as the association does what it can to drive the PRC and the Holy See apart in order to save itself...

The geopolitics of space

AsiaNews:

As affirmed by a senior Chinese military Official, who confirms the inevitability of an arms race in space. According to officials of the US Government, if military competition increases, the USA could reconsider commercial relations with Beijing.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Angency): “There will be increasingly more weapons in outer space during our lifetime.” Despite the general will to protect a pacific use of space, the rapid growth of arms in space is inevitable, retains Yao Yunzhu, a senior Colonel in the People's Liberation Army.

Yao, who heads the Asia-Pacific Office at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing, during a dinner at the Davos World Economic Forum (Switzerland), observed that “what China really wanted was that humanity would use space for peaceful purposes alone”. But, she added, in apparent reference to the United States, if there was going to be "a space superpower, it's not going to be alone, and China is not going to be the only one". {space superpower]
[...]

But US government circles say that a military escalation would have consequences in commerce as well. Christopher Padilla, assistant Secretary of Commerce visiting Beijing, comments that the Chinese missile had confirmed the worst fears of Washington, and that, “none of this will lessen international anxieties about the growth in China's military capabilities”. "Even as we work to encourage China's peaceful development and civilian trade, we must also hedge our relations with China."

In the commercial field, the trade deficit of the US with China is expected to show an increase of up to 230-240 billions of dollars during 2006. For a long time Washington has been asking Beijing to revalue the yuan, protect intellectual property, and to consent to full access to US goods and services in the Chinese market, measures that would allow the reduction of the deficit. China has never directly refused, but has always procrastinated in adopting these measures.

Now the new military concern could make the commercial issues even more urgent. The United States is worried that China's programme to build or buy advanced ships, missiles and other weapons could eventually catch up with US military might.

In the post-9/11 military shake-up, an increasingly independent US Space Command with control over US assets in space and their protection was gutted and subsumed into Strategic Command. Ever since, certain circles have lamented the fact and called for the recreation of an independent command with one one mission: outer space.

Given the threat of the People's Republic of China, this could happen, though not immediately.

Why would an independent command serve the US and its allies and the world in general better? As it's often noted, something that does many things at once usually does none of them well. This usually is said of things like fighter planes and naval ships, but it also applies for the most part to bureaucracies as well. When Space Command got folded up into Strategic Command, it became just another component of a command with a completely different mission: strategic defense based around the nuclear deterrent with all the attendant submarines, planes and missiles on earth. A change in focus usually leads to reappropriation of funds and a lessening of concern for certain other areas. When your superiors are fighting it out for dollars in Congress, they may not always be looking out for your particular sub-command's best interest because they have their own pet projects and priorities.

An independent Space Command would have its own mission and its own well-being in mind: the effective defense of US space assets. Just what are those assets? Think of how much fun it would be if the PRC just starts shooting down GPS satellites or commercial communications satellites? When people think 'militarization of space', they usually think of nukes and laser systems and the like, but in the here and now, we're talking just what mainland China has done, the destruction of orbiting satellites.

The Asian Church

Saint Polycarp, Bp of Smyrna
Saints Timothy and Titus, bishops

Vietnam
The newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam:

At the meetings, PM Dung informed the Pope Benedict and Cardinal Bertone about Vietnam's achievements after 20 years of implementing renovation policies aimed at openness and international integration.

PM Dung affirmed that the Communist Party and the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam have always respected democracy and the right to freely practise one's beliefs and religion, which have been written into laws, and consistently implementing them to facilitate the advancement of religious groups, considering this as an important element to ensure national unity.

All the other news stories out there say pretty much the same thing as far as there was a meeting, it lasted about half an hour, the PM met with Cardinal Bertone and everyone came away saying relations ought to improve.

Korea
Sandro Magister has up an interview with the Archbishop of Seoul from the CEI newspaper from November 22 of last year.

“Over the past ten years the Catholic Church in Korea has gone from less than three million faithful to over five million,” recounts cardinal Nicholas Cheong Jin-suk, who has been archbishop of Seoul since 1998. “And vocations also continue to flourish. By now we are 10 percent of the population, the highest percentage in Asia after the Philippines and Vietnam. In Seoul, we make up 14 percent of the population, and we have launched an initiative called the Evangelization Twenty Twenty Movement, with the aim of reaching 20 percent by 2020. Particularly promising is missionary activity among the young soldiers, whose ranks have swelled to 18 percent Catholic as of last year.”
[...]

A: I think of the defense of human life beginning with conception, and of clear opposition to any attempt at genetic manipulation. Unfortunately, our country has become famous throughout the world for the activities of a pseudoscientist who manipulated more than two thousand embryos for research that turned out to be phony. Another challenge that our society and our Church are facing concerns the family. Currently, one marriage out of three ends in divorce after just three years. Not to mention the problem of young people besieged by a mass culture saturated with sex and violence. With respect to these issues, the Catholic Church in Seoul, but also in other places, is on the front line of spreading the Gospel and defending those Christian values that are so valuable for personal happiness, but also for harmonious coexistence.
[...]

China
Last but not least, Cardinal Zen's interview with the AP has been published by the International Herald Tribune. It is all worth reading, but this caught my attention as it applies not only to Vatican policy, but everyone's policy.

"I think in this moment the most important thing we have to do is to assess the situation, to assess what we have done in many years and realize that we must change strategy," he said. "Because in so many years we have accepted compromises which in the beginning were good and necessary, but after so many years we can see there is a bad side effect."

Reaction to the Chinese letter

Saint Timothy, Bp of Ephesus
Saint Francis de Sales

I was going to sort through the news on the letter to China, but everything floating around out there is just rehash of the basic story. We'll really just have to wait until the letter makes its appearance to judge just what the Pope's intentions are regarding mainland China and Taiwan.

China, again (and again)

There is all this talk in the media about some kind of olive branch to be offered to the People's Republic of China. The Pope will be sending a letter to Chinese Catholics.

What will the letter say?

Is this one of those times when we will see the Vatican perform its usual act of feel-good diplomacy? Or is it possible that this in fact could be a real example of Benedict's call of a smaller Church, dedicated to its core beliefs?

As I've said again and again here, the PRC is not to be trusted. The Communists and their Patriotic Association lackeys have done nothing to earn any kind of special compromises. They arrest bishops, priests and laity. People disappear into the bamboo gulag forever. Cardinal Zen has written the preface to a collection of writings by various Chinese martyrs. He recounts one episode from his hometown:

The most relevant episode happened on the tragic day of September 8, 1955, when police conducted a gigantic raid, arresting hundreds of Catholics - from the bishop to priests, from catechists to members of the faithful belonging to [religious] associations, above all the Legion of Mary. They were brought to the dog racing stadium, where the bishop, the heroic Ignatius Gong Pinmei - created a cardinal in pectore in 1979, while he was still in prison - instead of renouncing the faith, cried out amid the distress of the Catholics huddled there and the disdain of the guards: “Long live Christ the King, long live the pope!”

In mainland China, all suffer for Christ. Countless martyrs have died and will die before the political landscape of the PRC is changed for the better. The question is will some kind of detente between the Holy See and the PRC help or hurt?

Let us ask this question instead...

The Red Chinese agree to give the Holy See final say over ordinations, which is allegedly the key sticking point. In return, the Pope plans on visiting at the time of the Olympics in 2008. Between then and now, the Red Chinese go on with persecuting others, Christians of other churches, Falun Gong, political dissidents.

Has in this hypothetical the situation of Chinese Catholics been helped or hurt?

Recently in the PRC

Zenit has a nice summary of recent events in the People's Republic of China pertaining to religious affairs.

One item of interest:

HONG KONG, NOV. 12, 2006 (Zenit.org).- As speculation continues over the future of relations between the Vatican and China, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun recently offered to step up his activity in this area. In January the archbishop of Hong Kong reaches 75 years of age, when he must offer his resignation to the Pope. If this is accepted, then he would like to dedicate more time to the Church in mainland China, he told the South China Morning Post on Sept. 22.

Cardinal Zen said that he had spoken of this desire with Benedict XVI. According to a Sept. 28 report in the Morning Post, the Pope promised to consider the matter.

The Dalai Lama

AGI Online has the coverage:

POPE-ISLAM: DALAI LAMA, DIALOGUE IS THE PATH FOR PEACE
(AGI) - Vatican City, Oct 13 - The Dalai Lama shared Benedict XVI's desire for peace and his conviction that this is the way to build peace, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader said at the press conference after the hearing this morning at the Vatican. "The meeting with Benedict XVI was a religious one in which we spoke about human values, religious harmony and the environment," he explained, saying that there was a substantial agreement on these points. As far as the tensions with Islam are concerned, the Dalai Lama said he told the Pope that "few people who do evil do not represent their religion". "It is not right to make generalisations on the behaviour and the deeds of a few. Not all Muslims are terrorists. A few people doing evil cannot be considered to be representatives of any community: Catholic, Jewish, Muslim or any other," he said to the press. The meeting did not touch on China, because "there are many Christians there who are having trouble because of their faith". When asked about human rights in China and in Tibet, the Dalai Lama replied that the topic is discussed with the Chinese government by many foreign delegations visiting Beijing. "This needs to be done constantly regardless of the response given," he said. The Dalai Lama was also asked about the Panchen Lama, the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism, who was kidnapped in 1996 by the Communist government. "I have no news," he replied. "The Panchen is youngest prisoner of conscience in the world (he is currently 16, Ed.) and every time we ask about him, the Chinese government replies that 'he is where he is'." (AGI) -
131943 OTT 06

The Dalai Lama always comes across as a saintly individual, but (we knew that was coming, right?) sometimes his message can... grate.

"Not all Muslims are terrorists!"

Thanks for the tip.