Cardinal Zen did go directly to Pope Francis, before talking to the media. He is now talking to the media because, seemingly, he believes that Pope Francis continues to misunderstand the situation by seeing it through the lens of Westerners like the Italian Parolin, who Cardinal Zen suggests misunderstands the communist state. Cardinal Zen suggests that miscalculations made from Western misunderstandings of the realities of communist China must be corrected, and it seems reasonable to me to hear him out, since he has the experience of an actual Chinese religious leader living under this communist regime.
May I ask, Minks, why your initial reaction is to characterize this situation as a ‘disobedient Cardinal spilling his guts to media to appeal to a mob’? And the history you draw from in critiquing the Cardinal’s actions, and presuming this Pope’s excellence of international political calculation, is a reference to historical actions of a different Pope in a very different historical circumstance?
I suppose what I’m asking is why in your comment you do not acknowledge the existing persecutions against Catholics on the ground in China; how these offences against Chinese Catholics seemingly worsened after the Parolin approach to trying to appease this communist state, and how the actual experts on the ground (actual Chinese people and religious leaders living through this circumstance, including Cardinal Zen) are trying to explain to the American and European officials (e.g. Francis and Parolin) that what they are doing is the opposite of help, in this particular cultural and historical circumstance. You seem to suggest that maybe Pope Francis is secretly sneaking Chinese Catholics out of China (or otherwise somehow genuinely reducing harm against them, instead of increasing harm against them); however, I am skeptical on the grounds that Cardinal Zen should then know whatever these counterpoints are, and if they were genuinely helping, he’d presumably be on-side and quiet, instead of off-side and public about it, here.
With respect, friend, history doesn’t just repeat itself. Or at least, more than one type of history repeats itself. There have indeed been popes who make political calculations that ultimately pay off to the benefit of vulnerable populations. And there have been popes who make political calculations that ultimately sabotage and harm vulnerable populations. Neither you nor I are in a position to say for certain which outcome Pope Francis’s political efforts will have (presumably both you and I, like Cardinal Zen, believe that Pope Francis intends harm reduction in China; the question though is whether the specific actions taken will concretely result in that, or whether the communists out-manipulated the religious people here). But Cardinal Zen is local to the situation, knowledgable about the situation, and his words and actions seem to me very much worth respecting and listening to. Not smearing as if he’s automatically in the wrong just because some person on the internet can think of a different pope in history who made a political calculation that was defensible.
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