Xi Jinping's Pope

Online petition opposing China-Vatican deal was hit by cyber-attack
Christian Today 

The Catholic Church now has a Manchurian Pope

An online petition opposing an agreement between the Chinese government and the Vatican was subject to a cyber attack on February 14, it has emerged.
According to a statement from the group Free Catholics in China, a denial-of-service (DDOS) attack on its website meant that it did not resume normal service until the following day, the Catholic Herald reported.
'We will not be cowed into silence by such attack, and we will never stop voicing out for the Church,' the group said.

The controversial Vatican-China deal is reportedly set to be reached by next month. 

Chinese Catholics are divided between those in the 'underground' Church who are loyal to the pope and the government-backed Catholic Patriotic Association, which appoints bishops without Rome's approval.
The open letter published on the website is signed by named Catholics mainly in Hong Kong and also in the US and the UK. 

It says: 'We are deeply worried that the (proposed) deal would create damages that cannot be remedied.'
The 15 lawyers, academics and human rights activists who have signed the open letter express dismay at an agreement which would involve the Vatican recognising seven bishops appointed by China's Communist party.
The letter censures the appointment of seven bishops by the Chinese state, not the pope, adding that the bishops' 'moral integrity is questionable'.
The letter, published on the influential site Asia News and elsewhere, says: 'We are worried that the agreement would not only fail to guarantee the limited freedom desired by the Church, but also ... deal a blow to the Church's moral power. Please rethink the current agreement, and stop making an irreversible and regrettable mistake.'
The letter to bishops around the world came less than two weeks after Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong, accused the Vatican of 'selling out', writing in a blog post: 'Do I think the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China? Yes, definitely, if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months.'
Last month, the Vatican asked two underground bishops to give up their positions in favour of government-appointed counterparts, one of whom was excommunicated by Rome in 2011.
A petition attached to the letter had been signed by 1,600 people as of last week.
The cyber-attack happened within hours of widespread international publicity about the open letter.

Xi Jinping's Pope

Francis’s Capitulation To Communist China Betrays His People And Faith
Far from making life easier for Chinese Catholics, accepting Communist control of their bishops disheartens and oppresses them further.
By Maureen Mullarkey

Is Francis a naive crypto-communist?

Nothing better reveals the moral compass of the current pontificate than its mania for smiling relations with a Leninist dictatorship. 

Francis is not the first modern pope to wish for better relations with the People’s Republic of China. But he is the first to acquiesce in the regime’s goal of absolute dominion over religions, particularly the Catholic Church. 

His predecessors were more lucid. 

And more principled
The Vatican is poised to surrender control of the long-suffering Roman Catholic Church in mainland China to the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CPC). 

Short of full diplomatic recognition, the deal abandons Chinese faithful to their persecutors.
Validly ordained bishops are being asked to step down to make way for government-approved ones, including several who have been excommunicated. (Excommunication is the penalty for accepting ordination without papal approval.) 

Faithful priests already selected as valid successors to retiring bishops have been ordered to forego ordination to avoid offending the Chinese regime.
Far from making life easier for Chinese Catholics, this disheartens and oppresses them further. 

The reward for their heroic decades-long endurance is a garland of tears over betrayal by the papacy they honored at cost to themselves. 

No wonder Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Shanghai-born bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, calls it “a bad deal.” 

A lion of a man, and a persistent advocate for human rights and democratic liberties, Zen has been an obstacle to Vatican appeasement of Beijing.

What China’s Rulers Want, and Are Getting
On January 18, the cardinal posted an open letter on his blog—reposted by AsiaNews—warning against the consequence of accommodation: “The Communist government is making new, harsher regulations limiting religious freedom. They are now strictly enforcing regulations which, up to now, were practically only on paper. From the 1st of February, 2018, attendance to Mass in the underground will no longer be tolerated.”
Mass in the underground will no longer be tolerated. 

In other words, the emboldened regime need no longer keep up appearances for public relations. 

With the Vatican’s blessing, it can openly enforce prohibition of the valid Mass for which close to three generations of Chinese faithful have suffered.
Going forward, all bishops will be “democratically” selected by the government-led Council of Bishops, to which the Vatican has already ceded authority. 

Names will be sent to Rome for rubber stamping, a sellout that appears to have been in the works for some time.
In a significant but overlooked 2015 article in AsiaNews, editor Bernardo Cervellera explained Beijing’s bedrock position in “negotiations” with Vatican sympathizers. 

Then as now, any mention of imprisoned bishops was off the table. 

Then as now, Beijing’s proposal consisted exclusively on complete recognition by the Holy See for all Communist Party-approved bishops. 

Moreover: “The Holy See must approve the Council’s appointment and has a weak veto only in ‘severe’ cases, which must be justified if used. If the Holy See’s justifications are considered ‘insufficient,’ the Council of Bishops may decide to proceed anyway.”
Cervella continued: “The increased controls have only one purpose: to preserve the monopoly of power of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and remove or crush any person who might challenge it or its very existence.”
The Vatican has already quietly accepted certain Communist-appointed bishops. 

But even circumspection no longer applies. 

On January 29, AsiaNews quoted Zen again: “ Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China? Yes, definitely, if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months.”

‘Manipulate Catholics to Submit to the Communist Party’
Francis’ bow to Beijing is not an internal matter for Catholics only. 

The concession is a rag bag of geopolitical ramifications, an ominous move in a larger global power struggle in which the Chinese Catholics are so much collateral damage. 

The omelet matters more than broken eggs.
Judged solely by low Machiavellian standards of statesmanship, the capitulation is a political coup. But for whom? 

For China, thawed relations with the Vatican enhance its global image and deflect attention from its militarism, duplicity, and depravity regarding human rights. 

Plus, the regime earns a diplomatic victory over Taiwan. 

The Vatican can tout the close of a seven-decade breach between the underground “Church of the Catacombs,” loyal to the Holy See, and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a creature of Beijing.
The Patriotic Association, founded in 1957 as the CPC’s counter-church, is a nationalist stand-in for the ancient repository of thought and worship in communion with Rome. 

Twenty years ago, Matthias Lu, a noted translator of the church fathers, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas into Chinese, summarized its aims. 

They have not changed: “Its [the Association’s] commitment is to manipulate the mass of the Catholic population in order to integrate them into the Socialist revolutionary movement by submitting them to the leadership of the Communist Party in all things.”
Vatican press trumpets this pact with the devil as an historic halt to impending schism. 

The spin is worthy of the CPC’s Central Publicity Department. 

Francis has merely flattered the regime by normalizing an existing schism dating from the 1950s when the Catholic Church was outlawed, its properties confiscated (later transferred to the Patriotic Association), and Catholics arrested en masse. 

The winning side in this new order belongs to Xi Jinping.

Communism Is Not Reconcilable with Christianity
In May, 2015, Xi Jinping spoke with the United Front, led by the Central Committee. 

He repeated what Communist Party leasers have affirmed since Mao denounced the Vatican as “the stray dog of capitalism.” 

In sum, he insisted on “Sinicization of religion,” including independence from “foreign influences,” as the only way the Catholic Church will be permitted to survive in China.
Xi’s Sinification is not the dialogue with Chinese culture (inculturation) that has characterized the church in China since the sixteenth century. 

Instead, it is a political power grab that reduces Christianity to an offshoot of socialist doctrine. Churches can continue to function as charitable organizations or non-governmental organizations, but the hierarchy become bureaucrats in the party apparatus.
Autonomy from Rome teems with implication for the Catholic Church’s social doctrines. 

The bureaucrats of collectivism have their own dogmas, infallibilities, and absolutes. 

These are in radical contradiction to traditional Christian reflection on morality, especially those relating to life issues.
Implicit in Francis’ conciliation is permission to ignore a range of moral matters that define a Christian conscience. 

The Catholic Church’s philosophical arguments defending the inviolable dignity of human life and the primacy of the individual cannot be asserted in pulpits. 

Silence is assured on labor camps, on the execution of prisoners to feed the lucrative organ trade, and on “family planning” policies. 

A comfortably Sinicized church can keep a good conscience while disregarding forced abortions, forced sterilizations, or forced migration (e.g., the massive Three Gorges Dam project unhoused 1.4 million peasants and submerged some 900 towns and villages).
In all, the Bergolian pontificate is set to achieve what the Communists have not: strangulating the Catholic Church as a living witness to the gospels and their demands.

The Manchurian Pope

Vatican is selling out Catholic Church to China: Holy See ordered two bishops to make way for Beijing’s choices 
By Lucy Hornby in Beijing

 Cardinal Joseph Zen: 'Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China? Yes'

One of Asia’s most senior Catholic leaders has accused the Vatican of selling out the Church by pursuing a rapprochement with Beijing while the Chinese government cracks down on religious freedom.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the outspoken 86-year-old former bishop of Hong Kong, hand-delivered protests from two Chinese bishops to Pope Francis earlier this month after a Vatican delegation ordered them to make way for replacements picked by Beijing.
 The issue of bishop appointments has been a stumbling block in talks between Beijing and the Vatican to try to establish diplomatic relations.
The Vatican is one of 20 remaining states that maintain diplomatic ties with self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing insists is part of China.
 “Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China? Yes, definitely, if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months,” Cardinal Zen wrote in a blog post.
 The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
 Chinese Catholics went underground during the bloody decades of Maoist rule and the Cultural Revolution, before religious practice was tolerated again in the early 1980s.
 In many parts of China, the “underground” congregations and those led by bishops appointed by Beijing have been reconciled since a 2007 letter from Pope Benedict to Beijing, with bishop appointment agreed upon by the Vatican and Beijing’s “patriotic association”.
In some areas the rift still persists.
 There are 19 active “underground” bishops and 58 official bishops, not counting those who have retired, according to the Holy Spirit Study Center, which is part of the Catholic diocese of Hong Kong.
The protest from Cardinal Zen comes amid a general crackdown on religious practice in China outside the churches or mosques that are governed under the patriotic associations, which report to the Communist party’s United Front Work Department.
 Crosses have been removed from many Protestant churches that were constructed without permission and “house churches” ordered to disband.
The crackdown has included the foreign Catholic community in Beijing, which has lost one of the venues where Catholics previously met for English-language mass.

The Manchurian Pope

Francis' deal with China is an ignominy

By Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

The Vatican and China have reached a deal that would be a major step towards normalizing relations between the Catholic Church and the world's largest formally atheist regime, The Wall Street Journal reports. 

All that's needed for the deal to go through is the final nod from Francis and Xi Jinping. 

To call this a bombshell would be an understatement.
In this deal, the Catholic Church would recognize eight bishops who have been ordained by the Chinese government without the Vatican's permission. 

China's regime has set up a state-run and state-sponsored "Catholic Church" that competes with the underground Church, recognized by the Vatican. 

Although in practice the boundaries between these two bodies tend to blur, in reality they are very distinct. 

After all, Catholicism isn't Catholicism without obedience to the pope. 

The move would be a major coup for Francis, who has made no secret of his conciliatory attitude toward China and eagerness to reach some sort of live-and-let-live settlement with China's still-formally-communist regime. 

This comes at a time when Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds in China and, under Xi Jinping, the country's authoritarian government is further cracking down on liberal expression and dissent.
The pope surely thinks of such a deal as a coup. 

But, if approved, it would be an unmitigated catastrophe. 

It would not only be morally indefensible, it would also amount to nothing less than a dynamiting of Chinese Catholicism.
Today in China, faithful Catholics still must worship clandestinely. 

The Chinese government has systematically oppressed Catholics who refuse to kowtow to the Chinese government's vision of a subservient Catholicism. 

Faithful and clergy alike are subject to various levels of harassment and imprisonment, and reports of "disappearances" of "unregistered" priests and bishops are still common, according to the U.S. State Department. 

Chinese Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei spent 30 years in prison for defying the government's demands regarding his religion. 

Beda Chang, a Jesuit brother of the pontiff, was tortured to death for refusing to cooperate with the Chinese government.
Does the pope of Rome believe the martyrs of Chinese Catholicism suffered and died for a lie?
Less poignantly, but more significantly, the difference between the actual Roman Catholic Church and the "Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association" is not just about appointments, diplomacy, and ecclesiastical power politics. 

It's easy to forget when the media are dominated by stories about Chinese business tycoons, but China's government still officially pledges fealty to the ideology of communism, which Catholicism professes to be opposed to everything Christians are supposed to believe.
The "Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association" demands of its adherents the denial of something which sits at the heart of Christianity: supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord, even when it conflicts with allegiance with earthly authorities. 

This message has been at the heart of Christianity from the start. 

This is one of the core lessons of Christianity's founding event, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ: Christians believe there are many reasons Jesus was crucified, but one of them was because he refused to bow down to the political authorities of his day. 

The texts of the New Testament call on Christians to be good citizens of their homeland and to respect its laws, but also to refuse to obey earthly kings when their demands conflict with those of their divine king. 

Without this belief, Christianity is ultimately toothless, and therefore meaningless, and this point is the crux of the disagreement between China and the Vatican.
On top of being immoral, though, such a deal would also, for all intents and purposes, destroy Chinese Catholicism.
Christianity is growing like gangbusters in China, for a reason which is plain as day: It provides a stark alternative to the reigning ideology, which everyone knows is bankrupt. 

The Christian sects that get adherents in China are the ones that don't sell out to the government, but provide a true alternative to it.
This story has played out in the Church's history countless times, which is why it's so baffling to see a pontiff willing to make the same mistake all over again. 

Historically, the Church has grown when it has been counter-cultural. 

"The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church," the ecclesiastical writer Tertullian once said. 

It was the Catholic martyrs' impressive witness that drove so many Romans to Christianity, despite the fears of persecution. 

The Catholic Church in France became moribund once it allowed French kings to appoint bishops and abbots, turning it into a spiritually empty bureaucracy. 

Even in the 20th century, it was when the Catholic Church refused to kowtow to hostile regimes that it grew and strengthened — and, in many cases, ultimately prevailed — and when it tried to accommodate that it withered.
Which boils down to one issue: How much does the Vatican trust in the promises that, as Catholics, they are required to believe Jesus gave to his Church?

In today's political context, the physical safety of the pope from martyrdom is more or less assured (although John Paul II famously faced a nearly successful assassination attempt that left him crippled for life), but it was not always so. 

Reportedly, the famous obelisk that sits at the center of St. Peter's Square used to sit at the center of the Coliseum where Peter, the fisherman of Galilee, met its own fate. 

The obelisk is meant to serve as a reminder to the Supreme Pontiff that he too, like all Christians, might be one day asked to give up his life for Jesus, which is why the obelisk is visible from the pope's office in the Apostolic Palace. 

Despite the gold and pomp with which he is surrounded, the pope is supposed to give himself up for Christ with the same abandon as St. Peter did. 

But it is also supposed to be a reminder that the Church is meant to prevail against all her earthly enemies, as it prevailed against Rome, then the mightiest empire the world had ever seen.
How would a pope who not only believed in that promise, but viewed it as a self-evident fact of life, behave towards China?