How Should I Combat this Misinformation?

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aggiecatholic

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I live in a small town in central Texas with a small Catholic population relative to the Protestants in town. A week ago during civic organization meeting, a “presenter” was giving a program in which she extolled the wonders of China. Two things happened during this presentation that have left me wondering how to respond.
  1. The presenter repeatedly mentioned that Christians were persecuted, having to hold their worship underground, in houses, out of the public view, etc. She said that the Catholic Church was different, though, as evidenced by the large numbers of Catholic churches in the public architecture. She said, “Obviously, the government is scared of Christianity, but not of the Catholic Church.”
  2. She later mentioned that she wasn’t sure why the Catholic churches were still around and why the government didn’t persecute the Catholics. She said, “I don’t have anything against the Catholic Church, but I think it has something to do with the Vatican, the government and money.” Immediately after this comment, the Methodist preacher in the crowd said, “Yeah, doesn’t the government have to approve the bishops?” The presenter answered with a resounding “yes.”
As the only Catholic in attendance, and likely the only Catholic member of the Lions Club in town, I was appalled. First of all, she was singing the praises of a wonderfully Communist nation; this galled me as it was. Second of all, as a young Catholic businessman among many older Protestants, I was taken aback and I wasn’t sure what to do – partly for not knowing the correct thing to say and partly for not wanting to appear angry at their misinformation.

I know the Methodist preacher, and he is a nice, warm, harmless man. He would never do anything like that intentionally if to misinform, but that’s part of why I am so perturbed about this. They both blindly disseminated misinformation to an audience that had no idea and likely took that for fact.

My question for you all is: How should I respond? I am thinking of writing emails or letters to both the presenter and the Methodist preacher letting them know that I have no ill will, but that I’d just like to clear up any misinformation regarding the Catholic Church in China. And, I’ve done a bit of reading on the Church, but what are the best answers for those comments? Obviously, the Vatican appoints the bishops in China as it does everywhere else. Obviously this lady did not realize that the persecution of Christians is a problem that we all share. I just thought I could lean on the vast knowledge of everyone here.

Sorry this was so long; thank you for listening and for any help in advance!
 
The long and the short of this is as follows:

The Catholic Church in China is heavily persecuted and has been driven underground. The state “approved” Catholic Church is a bit of sham and operates with restrictions. The Vatican has protested all of this and is making efforts to bring what is currently a state controlled church back into the fold. This is a very thorny issue that you should research before answering your peers.

I have read about this quite some time ago so my recollections are too sketchy to give more details. A search on the net should provide you with some quick insights into the problem.
 
The “Catholic Church” that she saw publicly is not the Catholic Church. It is a state run sham and their bishops are not approved by the Pope. As a result all their oridination by those bishops) are invalid and that means that their priests are no better than her n-C preachers.

The real Catholics are either in prison or underground.
There are six other Catholic bishops of the underground Church in Hebei province still in Chinese prisons; in some cases the faithful are not sure whether the prelates are still alive.
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  1. Bishop Su Zhimin of the Baoding diocese, where Bishop An served, was arrested in 1997 and his current condition and location are unknown.
  2. Bishop Han Dingsiang of Yong Nian, also in the Hebei province, was arrested in 1999 and his current condition and location are unknown.
  3. Bshop Jian Zhiguo of Zhengding, Hebei, was arrested in June of this year; he has been arrested 9 other times in the past three years. His current status is unknown.
  4. Bishop Shi Enxiang of Yixian, Hebei, was arrested in 2001; his current condition and location are unknown.
  5. Bishop Yao Liang, an auxiliary of the Xiwanzi diocese in Hebei, was arrested in July of this year, and is being held in Zhangjiakou.
  6. Bishop Zhao Zhendong of Xuanhua as arrested in December 2004; his current condition and location are unknown.
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China releases underground bishop after decade in prison
China defends ordination of Catholic bishops

The Search results

Maybe you should print out copies of both articles and then send them to her and the LC Prez.
Blackie
 
The previous posters are right. The organization this woman referred to as the “Catholic Church” in China is actually the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, an entity run by the Chinese government under Bejing’s Religious Affairs Bureau (this is the organization the Chinese government picks bishops for, and most likely the one that she and your methodist preacher were referring to). The bishops of the CPCA were excommunicated by Pope Pius XII in 1957 when they declared organizational independence from the Holy See. Thus, it is in schism from the Catholic Church as governed by Pope Benedict XVI. Their holy orders are valid but illicit. All true Catholics in China have been driven underground due to government persecution. In fact, actual Catholics in China (those still loyal to the Vatican) are sometimes referred to as the “underground Catholic Church.” There is a pretty good article about the CPCA on Wikipedia; I got some of this information from it.
 
Black_Knight_MI said:
The “Catholic Church” that she saw publicly is not the Catholic Church. It is a state run sham and their bishops are not approved by the Pope. As a result all their oridination by those bishops) are invalid and that means that their priests are no better than her n-C preachers.

The lack of papal approval does not cause episcopal ordinations to be invalid.
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During my time in the PRC, I met plenty of Christians, was invited to numerous house-churches, heard a few stories of persecutions of a few different religious groups, attended Mass in a large church in downtown Beijing, and saw the Chinese officials being Chinese officials about religion.

Rule One: don’t rock the boat. Any group of Chinese citizens which the government even suspects of thoughts of sedition will face very official trouble. Any group which behaves like Good Communist Citizens is unlikely to be bothered (generally; see below). While membership of any religious organisation used to be grounds for exclusion from the Party (i.e., communist excommunication), it is no longer: the Abbot of the ShaoLin Temple is Party official.

Rule Two: don’t invite foreign intervention. With a history of military invasions by stronger, foreign powers, the Chinese are unsurprisingly wary of any hint of foreign intervention. Churches with foreign attachments, e.g., the Catholic Church, come under suspicion because of the fear of foreign political manipulation. This is much like the Elizabethan English attitude: you cannot trust a Catholic, because a Catholic’s allegiance is to Rome, not to the Good Queen Bess.

There are ‘underground’ Catholics in China, but I would not jump to the conclusion that they are necessarily better or worse Catholics than those who attend the CPCA services. Likewise, the TSPM churches are neither reliably better or worse Protestants than are the ‘underground’ Protestants. None of these churches are difficult to find.

From the Party’s point of view, any Christian who chooses not to belong to either the CPCA or TSPM is defying the will of the Party, which is Not On, and is cause for suspicion of sedition. In practical terms, little is generally done about this, but, every once in a while, a district secretary will be directed by his superiors to ‘do something about these dissidents’, and that is when the persecutions occur, and people get disappeared.

The persecutions are considerably less common, and less intense, than in previous decades. In part, this may be because the Party has become less afraid of the idea of Chinese Christians being used as pawns by foreign powers, but Falun Gong is also likely to be a factor. Falun Gong breaks Rules One and Two, and incurs persecution on a scale only possible under a totalitarian regime. One of the results of that action is that the GongAnJu (c.f. FBI) has less time to worry about Christian groups.

Of course, were a Chinese Catholic to resolutely insist that the CPCA is a false sect in schism from Rome, s/he would seem to be very much in breach of both rules, and would be treated accordingly, not on a religious basis, but on a political one.

Is that a little clearer?
 
atsheeran said:
The lack of papal approval does not cause episcopal ordinations to be invalid.
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Aaahhhhhh, but without a pontifical mandate, those involved in the episcopal ordinations are in schism and incur excommunication, as did Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Canon 1382 was invoked to clarify the matter.

"Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ" - St. Jerome
 
Thank y’all so much. I had already done some research online about this, so I understood much about the differences between the Catholic Church that is seen publicly and the true Catholic Church in the PRC.

I mainly wanted to get a feel for how some of you would respond, and I appreciate your replies! I just know that I’ve got to stand up against the misinformation out there, no matter how small it might be, and this bugged me a good bit.

Thanks again!
 
I pray your efforts will meet with acceptance by those needing this correction. Please keep us posted. 👍
 
Aggie Catholic,

Hello and welcome to the Catholic Answers Forums. I hope you have a blessed and fruitful time here.

I think you are on the right track: communicate with the Methodist preacher and the presenter privately, giving them the truth of the matter. (Of course this means that you need to have done your homework ahead of time.) I’m not sure whether or how to respond in a public forum, since the misinformation was given publicly; perhaps the best policy there would be to wait for the subject to come up again. (If you try raising the subject to refute it, it would smack of “Methinks the woman doth protest too loudly.”)
  • Liberian
 
elvisman said:
Aaahhhhhh, but without a pontifical mandate, those involved in the episcopal ordinations are in schism and incur excommunication, as did Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Canon 1382 was invoked to clarify the matter.

"Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ" - St. Jerome
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Right, but that still doesn’t affect the validity of holy orders.
 
Other than the Papacy what are the diffrences between the Underground Catholicism and China Approved Catholicism?
 
I hate to bring this up, but the Shaolin temple is in the same boat as the Catholics: their abbot is a Communist schill. Ditto the Lama they just installed in Tibet (I don’t remember his title, but I think he’s supposed to be an avatar of the Bodhisattva the Japanese call Jizo, protector of dead children).
The Chinese desire, as they have always desired, to contol Christianity and Buddhism, because those are the main religions in China that have something beyond the state. Taoism, after all, is quietist, and Confucianism makes the Divine Right of Kings look like anarchism; animism (generally filtered through Confucius or the Tao) is a nationalist faith, anyway. Muslims…are a tiny, poor minority, and, since they’re mostly Mongols, the Chinese don’t care what happens to them.
But the people who hold with the Pope or the Lama, or who want Nirvana or the New Jerusalem, are dangerous, because they don’t have a permanent interest in China staying the way it is. Periodically in most East Asian countries you’ll have anti-Buddhist purges–Korea in the Joseon era, Japan under Nobunaga and again in the 1870s, China in the 15th century when the original Shaolin temple was burned–and Christian-hunts. This is because, unlike the various kinds of Shamanism or Shinto, which can be reconciled with statist ideologies like Neo-Confucianism or Communism, Buddhism and Christianity have a higher authority.
 
Montie_Claunch said:
Other than the Papacy what are the differences between the Underground Catholicism and China Approved Catholicism?
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Being underground, the underground churches are rather difficult to analyse. Anyone attempting to perform a survey of beliefs would be seen as a Party informer, and would be effectively stonewalled. As such, it is really quite difficult to identify exactly what differences do exist. The range of degrees of orthodoxy is probably quite broad.

The official Catholic Patriotic Association, however, does diverge from standard Catholic views: “The Chinese government monitors and inspects the registered seminaries, where it is forbidden to teach anything contrary to Party policy, including Catholic moral teaching on abortion, euthanasia, contraception, and divorce,” according to the Congressional-Executive Commission on Chinas’ 2005 report. This is to be expected, inasmuch as contravention of China’s One-Child Policy would be regarded as an illegal activity. Most likely, a few of the underground churches have different views on these issues, but individual members of the CPA may also hold the Vatican line.

Knowing anything about China is quite difficult, because neither the government nor the culture lends itself to transparency.

One of the major cultural differences to consider here is the view of words as opposed to deeds. Westerners often feel that they need to ‘stand up for their beliefs’ by stating them very loudly and by opposing any representation of a different viewpoint. They then act as they have stated. Chinese people will most often say what the other person wants to hear, in order to avoid confrontation, and then do what they themselves wanted to do. (Obviously, these are simplifying generalisations.) Therefore, the CPA saying that it adheres to Party policies does not necessarily indicate that it does adhere to them.
 
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