Xi Jinping's Pope

The case of a bishop detained by the Chinese government—and what it says about a looming deal between Beijing and the Vatican

By BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN 

Children hold candles during the Easter mass at a church in Xiaohan village of Tianjin municipality in 2009.

The Chinese government detained a beloved Catholic bishop earlier this week in an apparent attempt to keep him out of sight around the Easter holidays, just as an end to a decades-long split between Beijing and the Vatican may be in sight.
The bishop, Guo Xijin, is recognized by the Vatican but not by the official Catholic Church in China, which is under government control. 

Such underground bishops are at the heart of the split. 

Since the 1950s, the Chinese government has insisted it must approve the selection of bishops, but the Vatican has continued to ordain clergy in secret, leading to overlapping sets of official and underground bishops in some Chinese parishes.
Guo was detained in the days leading up to the Easter holidays after refusing to hold services alongside a government-approved bishop. 

The Vatican had asked the 59-year-old bishop to step down as a concession to Beijing. 

Negotiations between Beijing and the Holy See to end the dueling bishoprics and unify the Church are now underway, and a deal is expected as early as Easter weekend. 

But Guo’s detention is indicative of exactly what kind of solution the Chinese Communist Party has in mind. 

Most likely, it will not be a gentle rapprochement with the Vatican so much as a heavy-handed crackdown on the underground church, with the government attempting to neutralize it once and for all.
For decades, the Communist party-state has tolerated the existence of a parallel system of official churches organized under government auspices, and unofficial, or “underground,” churches that operate without government oversight. 

(This is true of both Protestant and Catholic Churches in China. While the Vatican deal will only affect underground Catholic bishops, legal and bureaucratic changes are likely to pressure both Protestant and Catholic underground churches.) 

A series of recent moves indicates that the party is now rejecting the status quo, and is seeking to extend its control over these formerly independent congregations.
New legislation took effect on February 1, tightening government regulation of religion and placing more explicit restrictions on unofficial religious activity. 

A leaked directive dated March 16 ordered local government agencies to begin investigating all underground Christian activity in Beijing, which suggests a coming crackdown on that activity, as other sectors of Chinese society have experienced in recent years.
Most telling, however, is the government reorganization announced last week that delegated religious affairs, previously under the auspices of the religious affairs bureau, a government office, to the United Front Work Department, a Communist Party organ under the direct control of the party’s Central Committee.
“The party is in some ways distrustful of the religious affairs bureau for fear that some people in that agency may have the kind of training that makes them more open to or sympathetic with different religious groups,” said Xi Lian, a professor of world religion at Duke Divinity School. 

“But now the United Front is going to take over and impose the iron will of the party.”

China is governed by a dual, parallel structure of party and government bodies at every level, from the highest echelons of power down to the village committees. 

Government bodies have tended to have relatively more transparency than party organs; the party is an information black hole. 

And the United Front Work Department in particular is the primary means by which the party has extended and solidified its influence over every level of Chinese society.
There is little room for speculation about the implications of this move for the Catholic Church in China. 

It almost certainly means more direct party control and marginalization for anyone who doesn’t toe the party line.
“The point of having administrative control over religious groups in China is to ‘deconflict’ an organization from competing with the party,” said Peter Wood, an analyst at the datamining firm TextOre who researches the United Front. 

“The point isn’t to provide services—it is control, redirection, and deconfliction.”
None of this bodes well for Chinese Christians, said Lian.
“It’s making a lot of Christians in China very nervous,” said Chloe Starr, a professor of Asian Christianity and theology at Yale Divinity School. 

“A lot of rights lawyers had wanted a greater transfer to the judiciary, rather than state oversight, but we’ve moved in the opposite direction. This is taking it further away from judicial process and more directly under the party influence, which is worrying a lot of Christians.”
A move to co-opt or even disband the underground church would be well in line with Xi Jinping’s sweeping campaigns in the past few years to strangle dissent and consolidate party control over every aspect of Chinese society. 

Xi has eliminated many of the gray areas that in the past allowed for a limited degree of expression. During his tenure, the party has created a comprehensive internet censorship regime, cracked down on human rights lawyers, implemented ideological controls in universities and private businesses, and constructed a high-tech surveillance state in the far-west region of East Turkestan.
The looming Vatican deal, then, comes at a time when Beijing is moving to exercise more control over religious affairs than it has in decades. 

One possible arrangement for such a deal, reportedly being discussed, would allow the party to select bishops but give the Vatican veto power over the final selection. 

But such an admission of foreign control over domestic affairs—and particularly over religion, which the party has always viewed with special suspicion—would likely be anathema to the party given its current direction.
“Not only is the deal a terrible one, the Vatican has chosen the worst time to do it—at a time when Xi Jinping is becoming the new emperor, when the party is cracking down so harshly,” said Lian. 

“I really have a hard time understanding why the Vatican still clings to this completely unrealistic hope of striking a deal that will the benefit the Church, and striking a deal that the Communist Party will honor.”
Lian raised the example of Hong Kong. 

The agreement signed between Britain and China when the city was handed back to the mainland after 150 years of British colonial rule specified that Beijing must allow universal suffrage in Hong Kong by the year 2017. 

But China has come to refer to that agreement as a historical document rather than a binding agreement, and it has refused to allow elections in Hong Kong without first vetting the candidates. 

Similarly, it’s highly unlikely that the Communist Party will now give true veto power to the Vatican. 

More likely, even if some kind of ceremonial veto power is given, all the candidates will be completely pre-vetted by Beijing. 

There is little reason to think that the party would honor any concessions to the Vatican, said Lian.
The case of Guo Xijin is likely a taste of what any supposed deal will look like on the ground—arrests, detentions, and forced adherence to Beijing’s line. 

Going forward, Chinese Catholics can expect more of this, not less.

Xi Jinping's Pope: The Secret History of Francis

Francis courts China with plan to install communist bishops
Associated Press

Cardinal Joseph Zen, pictured here in 2013, said he was revealing confidential information because Chinese Christians should know the truth. 

The retired cardinal of Hong Kong has revealed the Vatican’s efforts to improve relations with China included a request for a bishop to retire in favour of an excommunicated one recognised by Beijing.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the most vocal opponent of Pope Francis’s overtures to China, bitterly criticised the proposed change in Shantou diocese, Guangdong, and revealed in a Facebook post Monday that he had travelled to the Vatican this month to personally raise it with the pope.
Zen confirmed reports by the AsiaNews missionary news agency that the Vatican had asked Shantou bishop Peter Zhuang Jianjian, 88, to step aside for Bishop Joseph Huang Bingzhang. 

Huang was excommunicated by the Vatican in 2011 after he was consecrated without papal approval.

Pope's deal with China would betray Christ, says Hong Kong cardinal.

Zen said he was exposing the “confidential” information – including the contents of his audience with Pope Francis on 14 January – so China’s Christians “may know the truth to which they are entitled”.
“My conscience tells me that in this case, the right to truth should override any such duty of confidentiality,” he wrote.
The issue of bishop nominations is the key stumbling block in Vatican-Chinese relations, which were officially severed when Beijing ordered Chinese Catholics to cut ties with the Holy See soon after the foundation of the Communist state in 1949.
The Vatican insists only the pope can nominate successors to Christ’s apostles. 

China views the Vatican’s insistence as interference in its sovereignty.
Popes from John Paul II onward have expressed hope for restoring diplomatic ties, with Pope Benedict XVI taking the boldest step in 2007 by urging the millions of Chinese Catholics worshipping in both the state-controlled churches above ground and the oft-persecuted clandestine underground churches to unite under his jurisdiction.
Francis is taking that overture further to try to reach a deal with the state-backed Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.
“Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China?” Zen asked in his post. 

“Yes, definitely, if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months.”
Vatican spokesman Greg Burke declined to comment, or to confirm or deny the AsiaNews report.
The news agency, which follows the Catholic Church closely in China, reported this month that a Vatican delegation was in Beijing in December to negotiate Zhuang’s retirement and Huang’s nomination in Shantou.
The Vatican asked the legitimate bishop of Mindong, Monsignor Joseph Guo Xijin, to accept a demotion to become an auxiliary bishop to Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu, who isn’t recognised by the Vatican, the agency reported.
But Zen wrote that when he raised the cases with Francis during a private audience, the pope said he had told his aides “not to create another Mindszenty case”.
The reference was to the Hungarian cardinal Jósef Mindszenty, who was imprisoned by Hungary’s Communist rulers and, during a brief spell of freedom during the revolution of 1956, took refuge in the US embassy in Budapest. 

Pope Paul VI eventually stripped him of his titles under pressure from the Hungarian government.
Zen said he felt encouraged by the pope’s refusal to allow a similar fate to befall China’s underground churchmen. 

“His words should be rightly understood as of consolation and encouragement more for them than for me,” he said.

Calls to the ethnic and religious authorities in the two dioceses went unanswered. 

There was also no answer at the China Patriotic Catholic Association.