In praise of China’s outspoken cardinal

Cardinal Zen has history on his side, and he knows China better than any in the Vatican diplomatic corps
By Fr Raymond de Souza

Joseph Cardinal Zen, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, will not go away quietly. 

Which makes it difficult for the Vatican diplomats to go quietly and cut a deal with Chinese regime. What is playing out now, as the Holy See reportedly nears a deal with China on normalising relations, revisits a centuries-long debate about how the Church should deal with hostile, persecuting powers.
More specifically, the very public denunciation of Vatican diplomacy by Cardinal Zen revisits the Ostpolitik practised by the Holy See during the 1960s and 70s. 

The “eastern politics” of Vatican diplomacy sought to achieve breathing room for the Church under communism by ratcheting down the anti-communist rhetoric and reining in the underground Churches faithful to Rome. 

The Ostpolitik was the attempt by Paul VI to try a different path than that of Pius XII, who shut down all official contacts with the Soviet empire and its satellites.
In practice, Ostpolitik was bitterly opposed by the much of Catholic leadership who had suffered persecution behind the Iron Curtain. 

To do a deal with the Devil was to betray the witness of the martyrs. 

Or, as Cardinal Zen puts it with characteristic frankness, it is like St Joseph negotiating with King Herod after the massacre of the innocents.
Paul VI’s Ostpolitik was a cause of suffering for him; while he believed it was right, he took no pleasure in either dealing with the Devil or opposing the heroic pastors who daily bore the brunt of the battle. 

It was not, he conceded, a “policy of glory”. 

It was employed on the grounds that it was, according to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, the best way to salvare il salvabile – to save what could be saved.
The policy did not save much. 

It did not strengthen the Church behind the Iron Curtain, though it did secure the release from prison – at the cost of permanent exile – of several bishops. 

The one local Church that remained steadfast and strong under communism was in Poland, and there the primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, insisted that he, and he alone, would deal with the Polish communists. 

Such was his towering stature that he kept Vatican diplomats at bay for some 30 years, blocking the ne plus ultra of Vatican diplomacy, a full-status nunciature and exchange of ambassadors. 

He judged the price of that to be too high.
Cardinal Zen has rather the same view. 

The difference today is that we are able to hear the disagreements openly.
“In the Church there is a full right to disagree and to tell one’s own criticisms, and that the Holy See has a moral duty to listen to them and to evaluate them carefully,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, said in defending his China policy. 

“It is legitimate to have different views over the most appropriate responses to the problems of the past and present. That is entirely reasonable.”
Cardinal Parolin may well think that a “far eastern politics” will succeed where Ostpolitik failed. 

But he acknowledges that his view is not the only one, and that those who have suffered most are in disagreement with him. 

Whereas under the original Ostpolitik the Vatican’s diplomats could do their work in secret, and the underground Church had little recourse, today Cardinal Zen ensures that the betrayal of the Church in China – as he sees it – will have to be accomplished in the open.
After Cardinal Parolin’s defence of the Holy See’s China policy, a senior official – perhaps the cardinal himself, but certainly someone authorised by him – gave a lengthy interview to America magazine in which he laid out the path ahead with the Chinese regime.
“It is a suffered accord; it is not a good one, it is not the one we would like, but it is the best that we can get at this moment,” anonymous source said. 

The best that we can get. 

Salvare il salvabile.
Cardinal Zen argues that no accord is better than a bad accord. 

Don’t save what the communists will let you save, he argues. That is an illusion offered by fraudsters. 

The better way is to save your integrity and the fidelity of Catholic witness.
I am inclined to side with Cardinal Zen. 

He has history on his side, and he knows China better than any in the Vatican diplomatic corps. 

But I also am inclined take his side because he is man who speaks clearly and has evident courage.
In 2013 I hosted Cardinal Zen in Kingston for our annual dinner in support of our mission on campus, the St John Fisher Dinner. 

I invited him – without having any relationship with him – because I admired him greatly. 

Yet I was shocked when he accepted. 

For a retired octogenarian, the trip from Hong Kong was long and tiring. 

Why did he accept?
He explained at the dinner that it was foolish for him to travel so far at his age; and, after all, he had to re-arrange the classes he was now teaching to seminarians. 

But he “had to come” when he saw the invitation. 

Anything to honour St John Fisher, he said, meant that he had to accept. 

Cardinal Zen came to Kingston in 2013 because the Church needs more men like St John Fisher in the face of persecuting regimes. 

And that’s why he went to Rome last month to press his case again.

Xi Jinping's Pope

Underground Catholics pose challenge for Pope's dream of kowtowing to China’s despots
By Lisa Jucca, Benjamin Kang Lim and Natalie Thomas | BEIJING/HONG KONG
Members of the congregation clean the unofficial catholic church after Sunday service in Majhuang village, Hebei Province, China, December 11, 2016. Picture taken December 11, 2016. 

BEIJING/HONG KONG -- Every winter Sunday in the Chinese village of Youtong, hundreds of Catholic faithful brave subzero temperatures to meet in a makeshift, tin-roofed church. 

Tucked away in a back alley in a rural area of Hebei, the province with China's biggest Catholic community, the gatherings are tolerated – but are illegal in the eyes of the local authorities.
These worshippers are among the millions of "underground" Catholics in China who reject the leadership of the state-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), which proclaims itself independent of Rome. 

The underground Catholics are solely loyal to Pope Francis.
The Vatican, though, is currently seeking better relations with communist China – which is making some underground Catholics wary and concerned. 

Some are not ready to accept reconciliation with a Chinese government that has persecuted them for years. 

They now represent the biggest challenge to Francis' hopes of developing a long-lasting entente with Beijing, according to Catholic Church officials and scholars.
Pei Ronggui, an 81-year-old retired bishop who was recognised by the Vatican, made plain his concern about the CCPA as he prepared to take confessions in a bare room at the makeshift church in Hebei.
"There's no way there can be an independent (Catholic) Church (in China) because that is the opposite of the principles of the Catholic Church," said Pei, who spent four years in a labour camp after a 1989 government raid on an underground Catholic service in Youtong. 

"They (the Chinese government) have to change; if they don't change, then the pope cannot agree with them."
Cardinal Joseph Zen, a former bishop of Hong Kong, is also openly critical of a soft approach by the Vatican to Beijing. 

"A bad agreement -- such as one that imposes the underground Church to submit itself to the government -- would make these underground people feel betrayed by the Holy See," Zen told Reuters.
A senior Vatican prelate told Reuters that, while the Holy See appreciated Zen's concerns, the situation in China "is not black and white and the alternative (to an agreement) is a deeper schism in the Church."
The pope is keen to heal a rift that dates back to 1949 when the communists took power in China, subsequently expelling foreign Christian missionaries and repressing religious activities. 

Since then, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has refused to submit the local Catholic Church to Vatican authority, and the Vatican has refused to recognise the PRC.
Since taking office in March 2013, Francis has vigorously supported talks aimed at rapprochement.
Chinese Catholics on all sides – underground and in the state-sanctioned community – number an estimated 8 to 10 million and are overall loyal to the pope. 

Dozens of interviews with clergy and faithful show both sides wish for a positive outcome to the current talks. 

Nevertheless, many, especially among the underground Catholics, remain sceptical that the talks will lead to any substantial improvement in their religious freedom.
A draft agreement on the thorny issue of how to ordain bishops in China is already on the table, as Reuters has previously reported. 

The Vatican is keen to prevent Beijing from appointing new bishops who have not been recognised by the pope. 

There are about 110 bishops in China. 

About 70 are recognised by both sides; 30 just by the Vatican; and eight just by Chinese authorities.
The negotiations do not at present focus on whether Beijing should recognise the 30 or so underground bishops who have been approved by Rome but not by the Chinese government, according to Church officials, Vatican officials and Chinese sources familiar with the talks. 

Nor do they focus on the role of the CCPA, a political body that was created in the 1950s to supervise Catholic activities in China and is considered illegitimate by the Vatican because it runs counter to the belief that the Church is one and universal.
"The biggest problem is still ahead. And this is the Catholic Patriotic Association," said father Jeroom Heyndrickx, a Belgian missionary and member of the Vatican Commission for the Church in China who closely follows the negotiations. 

"I have no impression at all that China is willing to give in."
A source with ties to the Chinese leadership hinted at the government holding to a firm line, telling Reuters: "There is a saying: 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.' Catholicism needs to adapt to Chinese ways."
In a statement earlier this week, the Vatican said it was asking Beijing for "positive signals" about the talks. 

The CCPA declined to comment.

STATE WATCH
In interviews, underground Catholic clergy in China said they continue to face pressure to join the CCPA. 

That is problematic because the CCPA statutes say the organisation is independent of Rome, which clashes with the fundamental Catholic belief that the Church is one, holy, universal and apostolic.
"(Police) came to me again two years ago and asked me to sign up," said an 86-year-old Chinese Catholic priest who runs a small underground church inside his apartment in Shanghai. 

The priest, who spent three decades in a labour camp in Western China for refusing to give up his faith, said he told the police: "I gave up more than 30 years of my life for a principle: do you think I could ever join (the CCPA)?"
The priest, who declined to be named, said his movements are restricted and that authorities have repeatedly refused to issue him a passport, denying him his long-standing wish to carry out a pilgrimage abroad.
Other underground priests and faithful interviewed by Reuters said they faced similar restrictions and were often questioned by police about their activities. 

Local authorities also ask to scrutinise all evangelical material, including adverts for charity events, according to Catholic faithful.

An official at China's State Administration for Religious Affairs declined to comment, saying they had not received any reports of restrictions. 

The CCPA declined to comment.
In September, Chinese police took underground priest Shao Zhumin out of his diocese in Zhejiang province against his will, according to sources with direct knowledge of the situation. 

The police wanted to prevent Shao, who had been appointed by the Vatican as assistant bishop of Wenzhou, from running the diocese after the death of a local bishop, according to the sources. Officials did not respond to requests for comment.
In Shanghai, the auxiliary bishop Ma Daqin has been under house arrest for more than four years following his resignation from the CCPA on the day of his ordination. 

The Shanghai seminary of Sheshan, where Ma resides, was once home to nearly a hundred Catholic students; but its activity has now ground to a near halt, with only six seminarians still studying here.
In the long term, such restrictions and declines pose problems for the Catholic Church, not least because Protestant churches are becoming increasingly popular in China. 

Those churches have opted for a less confrontational approach with the government.

NEW CHALLENGES
Amid the tensions and talks, one Catholic priest has thrown down a challenge to both the Vatican and Chinese authorities. 

In October, Father Dong Guanhua declared he had been ordained bishop of Zhengding, 300 km (185 miles) southwest of Beijing, in 2005. 

He said he had become bishop without the mandate of either the Chinese authorities or the Vatican, and he has so far refused to clarify the circumstances of his ordination, even to the Vatican.
Dong, who says he never went to seminary and taught himself the Bible during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when many clergy were imprisoned or defrocked, is a maverick. 

But he illustrates the risk that some radical elements of the underground Church in China may break away from Rome, according to Vatican and Church officials.
"The underground Church will be wiped out if I don't do this," said Dong, 58, referring to taking a stand against the state-led Church.
The Vatican has urged underground Catholics in China not to take matters into their own hands if they oppose the Holy See and Beijing mending fences. 

But it has stopped short of criticising Dong. 

Rome appreciates that if he refused to bow to Vatican orders, it would show the Chinese government that Rome does not fully control the underground Catholics, according to Vatican and Church officials.
In light of such challenges some senior members of the Chinese clergy, in both official and underground communities, say they believe current talks between the Vatican and the Chinese authorities are going too fast. 

They feel a deal on the appointment of Chinese bishops, if signed, would be a historic step -- but they caution that the wounds of repression cut deep and may take a generation to heal.
Even some of those who support dialogue between Rome and Beijing say a deal would not immediately bring together the official and underground communities after decades of suffering.
"The Catholic communities are very suspicious of each other. We are like a traumatised child," said Paulus Han, a cleric and a prominent religious blogger in China. 

"We have to learn to live with a number of contradictions. It takes time."

Is Bergoglio a fellow traveller of the Communist Party of China?

The Vatican’s illusions about Chinese communism: Cardinal Joseph Zen says that Francis misunderstands how repressive China is.

By DAVID FEITH

Cardinal Zen in St Peter's Square, March 6, 2013.

Hong Kong -- Cardinal Joseph Zen, the most senior Chinese cleric in the Catholic Church, believes the Vatican is fast approaching a tragic mistake in China.
Within days church leaders could conclude a landmark agreement with the Chinese government after 65 years of acrimony and persecution. Pope Francis isn’t known to have signed off, and before he does Cardinal Zen prays to be heard.
The former bishop of Hong Kong speaks with passion that belies his age (84) and recent hospitalization for a lung virus. 

As we meet at the church complex where he has lived since 2009—and where he first moved as a novice from Shanghai in 1948—he warns of “surrender”: that Chinese leaders are demanding it and Vatican officials appear willing to give it “in the hopes of achieving an agreement.”
Proponents say the deal would help millions of “underground” Catholics and open the world’s most populous country for evangelization. 

Cardinal Zen says it would sacrifice church principles, abandon the faithful, undermine evangelization and invite further repression.
The deal concerns who gets to select Catholic bishops in China—as vital a power as there is. 

Beijing has claimed it since the 1950s, when Mao Zedong banished Vatican officials and established the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in their place. 

That organ now oversees the “official church” of some 70 bishops and five million adherents who answer to Beijing and toe its line. 

The underground church, by contrast, follows the pope, for which its 30 bishops and estimated seven million adherents face harassment, imprisonment and worse.
To promote unity the Vatican has lately accepted most Beijing-backed bishops. 

But it has always held that the state-run Patriotic Association is “incompatible with Catholic doctrine,” as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in 2007, adding: “The authority of the Pope to appoint bishops is given to the church by its founder Jesus Christ. It is not the property of the Pope, neither can the Pope give it to others.”
Yet now the Vatican seems willing to give it to Beijing, which is what Cardinal Zen calls “absolutely unacceptable.” 

Rome would commit to recognize as bishops only those clerics who first win nomination from the Patriotic Association’s bishops conference. 

This would make the church “totally subservient to an atheist government,” says Cardinal Zen, and may require the Vatican to cut ties to the true church underground.
Though he says state-backed bishops are generally “wonderful men” and “very faithful to the church,” Cardinal Zen laments that all are nonetheless “slaves” and “puppets.” 

Only someone ignorant of communism, he says, could think the nominations the government sends to Rome wouldn’t be coerced. 

Having taught in Chinese seminaries from 1989 to 1996, he recalls that state bishops couldn’t meet or even place international calls without government bosses present.
Cardinal Zen slams Vatican diplomats who say that embracing the Patriotic Association is needed to preserve the church’s hierarchy and sacraments. 

“I would prefer no bishops,” he says. 

“With fake bishops you are destroying the church.”
That’s what nearly happened in Hungary and other Soviet satellites in the 1970s after Rome embraced an Ostpolitik (“Eastern Policy”) of cooperation with Communist authorities. 

“The Churches in those countries have not been saved through the Vatican diplomacy,” he wrote recently, “but thanks to the unswerving faith of the simple faithful!”
He believes the same would happen in China if the Vatican refused to bow to Beijing. 

“The underground church is evangelizing very well,” he notes, even as authorities have destroyed 1,000 church crosses since 2013 and kept underground bishop James Su Zhimin in secret detention for two decades. 

“Also in the official church there are so many good people. . . . They are not afraid. Why should you surrender?”
“Pope Francis has no real knowledge of communism,” the cardinal laments. 

He blames Francis’ experience in Argentina, where military dictators and rich elites did evil while accused communists suffered trying to help the downtrodden. 

“So the Holy Father knew the persecuted communists, not the communist persecutors. He knew the communists killed by the government, not the communist governments who killed thousands and hundreds of thousands of people.” (In China it was tens of millions.)
“I’m sorry to say that in his goodwill he has done many things which are simply ridiculous,” the cardinal says of the pope. 

These include his approaches to both China and Cuba, the other communist state he has courted at the apparent expense of human rights. 

But still he’s the pope, so even if he signs a bad deal Cardinal Zen says he won’t protest once it’s done.
His message to the faithful in that case: You’re never obligated to act against conscience. 

“You are not bound to join the Patriotic Association. You can pray at home if you lose your churches.” 

An underground priest who loses his flock can go home and till the soil. 

“You’re still a priest anyway,” he says. 

“So wait for better times. But don’t rebel against the pope.”

Pius XII bis

An Open Letter To Francis On China

Benedict Rogers

Dear Holy Father,

Like every true Catholic in the world, I love you and respect your authority as the Successor of St Peter.
Like a great many people in the world, well beyond the Catholic Church, I recognise the beautiful message you, as Pope Francis, bring to the world.
And as a new Catholic who came into the Church little over ten days after your election to the papacy, my Catholic faith is inspired and intertwined with your pontificate.
I became a Catholic on Palm Sunday, 2013, received into the Church by Burma’s first-ever Cardinal Charles Maung Bo. 

Although I am British, I became a Catholic in an Asian country emerging from dictatorship, inspired by a Church that has endured decades of persecution. 

I have also lived in China and Hong Kong, and have come to know and love Cardinal Joseph Zen, whose story is told, along with my other heroes, in my book From Burma to Rome, which I had the privilege of presenting to you when we met in August.
For all these reasons -- because I love you, Holy Father, because I love the Church, because I love the people of China and Asia, because I love Cardinal Zen, and most of all because I love God and our Lord Jesus Christ -- I humbly appeal to you to reconsider your proposed agreement with the Communist regime in China:before it is too late.
Over the past three years, the human rights situation in China has deteriorated dramatically. 

Hundreds of human rights lawyers, many of them Christians, have been detained, simply for defending freedom of religion and freedom of conscience cases. 

Thousands of Christian crosses have been destroyed. Many Christian clergy, Catholic and Protestant, remain in jail or harassed. 

Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners continue to be persecuted. Allegations of forced organ harvesting -- targeting prisoners of conscience -- persist. 

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo remains in jail. 

Hong Kong’s freedoms are now in at tatters.
Earlier this year, the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission in the United Kingdom published an in-depth report, The Darkest Moment: The Crackdown on Human Rights in China 2013-2016. 

It was launched by the former Governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten, himself a Catholic, in June, and includes testimonies from Hong Kong democrats Martin Lee and Anson Chan, both Catholics.
Holy Father, you will be well aware of the arguments made by Cardinal Zen, which I need not repeat. I simply say that at this time, human rights are deteriorating drastically in China and I don’t believe it is the time to compromise. 

At a time when religious freedom overall in China is being further restricted, when other religions are being severely persecuted, when organs may be being harvested, when lawyers are being harassed, when freedom of expression is being denied, now is not the time to seek a special arrangement for the Catholic Church. 

Now is not the time to kowtow.
Furthermore, while I am a very new Catholic, and so I write with all appropriate humility, two of the things that attracted me into the Church are the Church’s commitment to justice and human rights, as set out in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, and the Apostolic Succession. 

That means the Church must take a stand against Xi Jinping’s brutality as it did against Caesar’s, Stalin’s and Hitler’s. 

And it means that it cannot settle for anything less than complete Papal authority over episcopal and priestly appointments in China. 

I don’t know what deal might be about to be agreed, but I find it hard to imagine Beijing agreeing to this. 

If it does, then I welcome it. 

But if not, I urge you to reject the deal. 

How can bishops appointed by a communist, corrupt, cruel and brutal regime be acceptable to the Church founded by Jesus Christ?
Instead of compromise with Beijing, I urge you -- Holy Father -- to follow in the footsteps of the Apostles, and lead a revolution for peaceful change in China.
With humble, sincere prayers from a relatively new Catholic,

Benedict Rogers