The Vatican's China Policy: Are Diplomatic Relations Prudent?

[whichwaytogo47]

If you are Moses and the people down below are worshiping a golden calf, God still saw the goodness in the people. Our Pope is a great individual and someone we should be willing to die for even if we disagree with him. But I’m concerned that his efforts at diplomacy may betray the very people he’s supposed to protect. The most important thing is for the Church to reach people and save souls.

In China, people have had services at an underground church (aka informal meetings in people’s homes) because the Chinese government has a prescriptive way that Xi Jing Ping must be worshiped ahead of God, something these people reject and are willing to die for. Thus “the true church” is invalid.

How does it help when Pope Francis tries to enter into terms with the Chinese? Won’t the Chinese use this as an opportunity to lead people away from the Catholic Church by forcing 100 million Chinese Catholics to worship something other than the God who died on the cross for our sins? Doesn’t this smell of somehow the Holy Se endorsing the behavior of the Chinese? Was Pope Francis right in making bishops appointed by the emperor now appointed by the Vatican? Sometimes fighting evil requires you NOT to work with them. Not all compromises lead to goodwill and lead to the just outcome. I mean 100 million Chinese became Catholic largely because of the persecution. I think there are 5.7 million who registered with the CPA, aka the Church that is convened with government consent.

 

[BartholomewB]

Are you familiar with the Bitter Winter blog? Its writers seem to be very well informed. They clearly have good sources in China.

https://bitterwinter.org/

 

[whichwaytogo47]

Some amazing writings.

 

[BartholomewB]

I don’t know the answer to your question. Which is the right way for the Church to face up to the persecution of Christians in China? Should the Holy See engage with the Chinese government in the hope of negotiating a deal of some kind that might bring about an improvement, or should it take the line that the Communist regime is an evil to be resisted at all costs? The question recalls the debate about Cardinal Casaroli’s Ostpolitik in the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Casaroli had been Secretary of State under Pope St. John Paul II all through the eighties, and had actively pursued a policy of rapprochement with the Soviet Union itself and with its satellite states in Eastern Europe. With hindsight it was very easy for Casaroli’s critics to say he had been wrong all along, since the events of 1989-91 showed that Soviet power, in the Brezhnev era and later, had in reality been much weaker than it looked at the time. But China is not the Soviet Union, and Xi J(name removed by moderator)ing’s communism is not Soviet communism. Russia had been a Christian country for nearly a thousand years; China has never been a Christian country. The number of Christians in China has grown exponentially in recent decades, in parallel with industrialization, westernization, and the relative prosperity arising from economic growth. Nevertheless, the regime still sees Christianity as a foreign religion that in a very short period has won millions of converts in China. Are the authorities going to tolerate that process, or are they going to crack down on it? And what can the Vatican do to nudge the regime in the right direction? Cardinal Parolin is being accused of making the same mistake that Casaroli made in the eighties, but the two cases are not really comparable.