Chinese Bishops asked to step aside

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goout said:
There are not two Churches. There is one Church.
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That is precisely what drove this decision. You say that this is disturbing, but so is having two Catholic Churches. You may understand the difference between the bishops the state supports and the ones they do not, but most of this distinction of shepherds is lost on the sheep.

I do not know if I agree or disagree, or more to the point, I know that I do not know enough to agree or disagree, but there is historical precedent for this move, and I do not think Western values can be used to judge the Holy Father on his dealings in the East.
 
pnewton said:
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goout:
There are not two Churches. There is one Church.
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That is precisely what drove this decision. You say that this is disturbing, but so is having two Catholic Churches.
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There are NOT two Catholic Churches in China.
?
 
I don’t know. You may well live there and know better, but my reading of the article, and other information I have read on this, has that there are two sets of hierarchy, one licit, one illicit. In your experience, is this wrong, or do the people of China understand the difference?
 
pnewton said:
I don’t know. You may well live there and know better, but my reading of the article, and other information I have read on this, has that there are two sets of hierarchy, one licit, one illicit. In your experience, is this wrong, or do the people of China understand the difference?
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Yes, for want of word that is correct. The Patriotic Church, which they refine it to become the Open Church, the so-called middle ground between the Patriotic and underground Church, is the one that the Communist government recognizes. The one and the same (Patriotic Church).

Obviously, they want to control the Church so that she will not become a strong competitor to Communism. It is about ideology, not so much that people cannot become Catholics and pray.

This Church is government sponsored - they have big churches in many cities.

The licit one, is the underground Church. They are hunted down. The priests and Bishops can just disappear for a while especially during important liturgical seasons like Christmas and Easter only to re-appear again. Some have died in unusual circumstances.

They gather illegally and do not have visible church buildings.

The Patriotic Church practices, especially the mass, have little difference (perhaps none at all). If you are a visiting Catholic and do not know any better, you would not know the difference. You thought you are attending a normal Catholic mass/church. You can expect everything like in your normal parish back home.

The government have strong control and enforcement of the media and that make the differentiation even more difficult.

The underground Catholics, on the other hand, only know who they are through their network. They do not know when their priests/bishops being ordained or appointed as they cannot afford the publicity.

This is the dilemma of the Catholics in China.

The underground Church has persevered in a very adverse condition, the Cardinal’s statement is understandable.

Obviously one of the underlying factors is political which both parties are stuck with.
 
goout said:
There are not two Churches. There is one Church.
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I thought that there was the underground Catholic Church not approved by the Chinese government and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church which is approved by the Chinese government? Doesn’t that make two Churches?
  1. undergound Church
  2. chinese Patriotic Church
 
OP is by “Rod Dreher” • January 23, 2018

Ok, non-issue stirring up controversy. [Aiming to mine our confidence in the pope!!!]
88-year-old Bishop Zhuang received a letter dated 26 October asking him to resign
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Past the age limit. Vatican has mandatory retirement age for Bishops.
And now, the Vatican itself is selling him out to the communists.
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Vatican is just enforcing its own rules that apply to every bishop in every country.
 
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Faced with the Vatican’s decision in favour of unlawful bishops,
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They managed to write an article with at least 1 typo that I’m quoting…More to the point, whoever the Bishops in China are the Vatican appoints them in secrecy out of obvious necessity. And the Chinese faithful and religious know about this. Saint John Paul II himself was involved in a seminary in communist occupied Poland, and during nazi occupation, and to the best of my knowledge both ordinations and formation where conducted under secrecy.
 
adgloriam said:
Faced with the Vatican’s decision in favour of unlawful bishops,
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They managed to write an article with at least 1 typo that I’m quoting…More to the point, whoever the Bishops in China are the Vatican appoints them in secrecy out of obvious necessity. And the Chinese faithful and religious know about this. Saint John Paul II himself was involved in a seminary in communist occupied Poland, and during nazi occupation, and to the best of my knowledge both ordinations and formation where conducted under secrecy.
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You are right about the Nazi occupation, but not about the Communist regime. Karol Wojtyla was publicly ordained in 1946 a priest an allowed to go to Rome to study. He came back a s priest in Poland. The Catholic Church had a policy of Ostpolitik with eastern Europe and Russia that allowed them to continue to publicly minister to the Catholic faithful.

He was allowed to travel at least twice that I know of, once during Vatican II and then again to the papal enclave in which he was elected Pope. It may well be this type of relationship that Pope Francis is attempting to establish with China. We do not know. I do know that because of this type of compromise we have the papacy of St. John Paul the Great and directly related to this, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

Never underestimate the power of the Gospel.
 
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pnewton said:
but not about the Communist regime
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I wasn’t only talking about the great Karol Wojtyla!
Fr Simoni was freed in 1981 but had to continue preaching clandestinely until the communist regime fell in 1990.
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Fr Simoni recalled his arrest, after celebrating Christmas Mass on December 24, 1963 and being placed in isolation. He told of being condemned to death, but the sanction was commuted to 28 years of forced labour.
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http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/new...-a-priest-who-spent-28-years-in-labour-camps/
 
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From the Catholic Herald link above:

“Cardinal Zen also claimed that Pope Francis told him in a private audience that he did not want “another Mindszenty case”, referring to Hungarian Cardinal Joszef Mindszenty who was asked to step aside for an archbishop favoured by the country’s Communist regime.”

For those who have forgotten Cardinal Mindszenty, here is a New York Times article on the event of his death.

http://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/07/a...ies-as-an-exile-in-vienna-at-83-cardinal.html
 
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Phil Lawler weighs in at Catholic Culture:

www.catholicculture.org

The Vatican ‘clarification’ on China talks only makes things worse

In its statement on the controversy surrounding talks between the Holy See and Beijing, the Vatican has affirmed what was never in question, while leaving the key question unanswered—at best. The January 30 statement from the Vatican press office is brief enough to be quoted in full: The...
www.catholicculture.org www.catholicculture.org
 
Robert Royal comments:

“The Chinese Communists studied the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the liberation of the nations behind the Iron Curtain thanks to St. John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and many others in the West who kept the pressure on Moscow. They appreciate the power of religion and clearly believe they can prevent Christianity from doing in China what it did in Poland and elsewhere. The tools are familiar: co-opt when you can, persecute and destroy when you can as well, and control information to make it appear you are simply asking for reasonable law and order within your borders.”

 
The author misses the point, and fails to recognize his own shortcoming, namely, that he is not in a position of judge over the Holy Father. The clarification does not make the matter worse by clarifying the involvement of the Holy Father unless one first judges the the talks as bad, or wrong.
 
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