The Manchurian Pope

A Catholic bishop and his rural Chinese parish worry about a deal between Beijing and the Vatican
By Emily Rauhala

Catholics from nearby villages pray and chant in Bobei Catholic Church in Guangdong province, China, on the morning of March 4, 2018. 
LUOTIANBA, China — The bishop can’t really talk about religion right now.
His unofficial church is caught in a fight over the future of the Roman Catholic faith here, a struggle for control between the Vatican and the Communist Party that will determine the fate of the estimated 10 million Catholics in China and shape the legacy of Pope Francis.
Bishop Zhuang Jianjian, 88, under watch and already in trouble, knows it is not safe to speak out. But he can still deliver a sermon.
Just before 7 a.m. on a recent Sunday, he walked to the front of a small, white church in the green hills of Guangdong province and told the story of how God tested Abraham and Abraham kept faith.
In half-empty pews, grandmothers in quilted jackets traced their fingers across the creased pages of their Chinese prayer books. 

Farmers, arriving late, made the sign of the cross. 

For them, and for millions of others, these are testing times.
For decades, the Vatican and the Communist Party have been at odds over Catholicism in China, particularly on the question of who appoints clergy — the Holy See or Beijing.
Vatican-appointed bishops like Zhuang operate underground, which means they are under surveillance and are never totally safe. 

The government-backed Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association chooses leaders for churches of its own.
Now, a deal is in the works. 

The plan would give Francis a say in how bishops are appointed in the People’s Republic. 

In return, the pope would recognize seven bishops who were ordained without Vatican approval.
It is being pitched as a way to restore ties between the Vatican and Beijing and bolster the church at a time when Xi Jinping is cracking down on religion, and Catholicism is losing ground to other faiths.

Villagers farm on their small piece of land in Guangdong province, China, on March 3, 2018. Luotianba Catholic Church stands in the background.

A Mary statue stands in the courtyard of Luotianba Church, which was built in 1840 by a French missionary
It is catastrophic sellout that would put party cadres in charge of communities that have long fought to worship without government control. 

They want the pope to reconsider.
“To join the Patriotic Association is to deny our faith,” said Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong and the deal’s most vocal critic. 

“If the government is managing the church, it is not the Catholic Church anymore.”
In an interview with The Washington Post in Hong Kong, where the church operates relatively freely, Zen confirmed the story that Zhuang could not relate.
In December, the elderly bishop was escorted from Guangdong to Beijing, where a papal delegation asked him to retire to make way for Huang Bingzhang, an excommunicated bishop who also happens to be a member of China’s National People’s Congress.
Zhuang refused. 

Keeping faith
Sitting in the seventh row that morning was a 71-year-old farmer with white hair and worn hands. 

He asked to be identified only by his family name, Cai, for fear of persecution.
On Sundays, Cai walks through fields of cabbage and sweet potato to attend Zhuang’s service. 

Most other evenings, he hosts neighbors in a makeshift chapel on the ground floor of his home.
Cai, like many here, traces his family’s Catholic roots back generations — “five or six, to the time of the Qing dynasty,” he said — when Catholicism established itself in this part of China under French influence in the mid-19th century.
He has seen faith tested. 

And he has seen it survive. 

“You cannot get rid of the Catholic Church,” he said. 

“Catholics are like seeds.”

Old photos of Bobei Catholic Church are framed and hung inside the church in Guangdong province, China.

That, of course, is what China’s leaders fear. 

The Patriotic Association, which was created in 1957, aims to channel Catholics into churches where faith in party, not faith in God, comes first.
While many Catholics in China have joined, millions of others have held out, unwilling to compromise on the primacy of the pope. 

Now, it is the pope who hopes to "unite" them.
The Vatican seems to be betting that regularizing religious practice will revitalize the faith. Catholicism is rooted in China’s countryside, and that has posed an ever larger problem. 

As young people move to the cities, small towns and villages empty out — and so, too, do churches.
At Zhuang’s service, there were perhaps two dozen parishioners: elderly farmers, two teenage girls and one fidgety altar boy who arrived, then zoomed away, on a muddy motorbike.
The villagers of Luotianba spoke carefully, and mostly off the record, to avoid criticizing the government or the church. 

Some said it didn’t matter who the bishop was. 

Others thought it did.

Small Catholic statues are on the shelf of a shop in Bobei village, in Guangdong province, China. About 800 people in the community are Catholic. 
Few seemed pleased about the prospect of change. 

Zhuang, their bishop, was born in this area and, like them, speaks Hakka, a language that is unintelligible to many Chinese. 

The bishop set to replace him, Huang, won’t understand them, Cai worried.
“We don't even know if he’s a bishop at all,” he said. 

“He wasn’t appointed by the church, he was appointed by the government. It will be very difficult for people who truly believe in God to accept this.”
And if the deal goes through? 

Recalling that morning’s service, Cai summoned the sermon on Abraham: “The message is to stick to your beliefs.”

Cutting a deal
Closer to the halls of power, the debate over a deal has been accompanied by secret meetings, open letters and dramatic, last-minute flights to Rome.
That Zen, and other church leaders, are willing to speak so openly is striking — and presents a challenge to the pope.
Efforts at rapprochement did not start with Francis, but he has given the issue greater attention. 

He has taken several chances to send greetings to Xi. 

In a 2016 interview, he wished the Chinese president a happy new year and expounded on the “greatness of the Chinese people.”
Negotiations appeared stuck until earlier this year, when news broke that Zhuang and a second Vatican-appointed bishop had been asked to step down.
Zhuang wrote a letter appealing to the pope and sent it to Zen. 

On the night of Jan. 9, Zen, not trusting Vatican diplomats to deliver his mail, decided to fly from Hong Kong to Rome, he said.
The next day, he arrived late to an audience where cardinals and bishops may kiss the pope’s hands. He handed Francis a translation of Zhuang’s letter, plus a letter of his own.

Catholics from nearby villages pray and chant in Bobei Catholic Church in Guangdong province, China, on the morning of March 4, 2018. 
Prayer books left on the bench of Luotianba Church in Guangdong province, China. 

A man walks into Bobei Church before a prayer in Guangdong province, China, on March 4, 2018. 

On the evening of Jan. 12, the pope received him and he made his case. 

“I was rather disorderly in my talking, but I think I succeeded to convey to the Holy Father the worries of his faithful children in China,” he wrote.
Zen called the deal a betrayal of underground Catholics who had kept faith under tough conditions. “With the deal, you are pushing people who are outside the cage, into the cage — that’s incredible,” he said.
Sister Beatrice Leung, a professor at Taiwan’s Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages and an expert on Catholicism in China, said she reserved judgment, but worried that the Vatican lacked expertise when it came to dealing with China’s government and risked getting “trapped.”
“The Vatican has made a great deal of concessions. I haven’t seen any concession from the Chinese government. That’s why in the outside world, in the free world, there is a lot of opposition,” she said.
An open letter written by a group of influential Catholics argued that the Communist Party had a history of breaking promises when it comes to protecting religious freedom.
“The agreement would not only fail to guarantee the limited freedom desired by the Church,” they wrote, “but also damage the Church’s holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity, and deal a blow to the Church’s moral power.”
In Luotianba village, the anxiety about what comes next is palpable — even when it goes unsaid.
“It’s not convenient to talk, forgive me,” Zhuang said that Sunday morning.
“But I will keep my faith.”

Rosary beads left on the bench in Luotianba Church, in Guangdong province, China, on March 4, 2018.

The Manchurian Pope

Hong Kong Catholics Condemn China-Vatican Deal
By Suzanne Sataline

About 200 Catholics attend a prayer meeting for the Chinese Church after news emerge that Beijing and the Vatican have reached a deal on bishop appointments, in Hong Kong, China, Feb. 12, 2018.
HONG KONG — At a recent all-night prayer vigil, nearly 100 Roman Catholics gathered in a church ground floor chapel to pray the rosary in Cantonese for their fellow worshippers in mainland China.
On their minds as they recited the prayer: a possible deal between the Holy See and China's communist leaders that is worrying many Catholics.
Lucia Kwok, a care worker stepped out of the chapel and spoke of her dismay over the recent news. Francis, she said, was making deals with the government in China. 

“We don’t trust the PRC because they are dishonest. They lie, they do bad things and never keep their promises,” Kwok said. 

“China is not worth our trust.”
Many Catholics in Hong Kong are confused and upset with the Vatican’s recent steps to resume relations with the Chinese government even as Beijing has continued to silence critics.
In the nearly seven decades since its establishment, the People's Republic of China has not had formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See, a condition rooted in the Vatican's tradition of appointing its bishops worldwide — a practice the mainland Chinese leadership has historically viewed as interference in its internal affairs.

Cross-bearers process through the church grounds during a Christmas Eve mass at the Southern Cathedral, an officially-sanctioned Catholic church in Beijing, Dec. 24, 2015.
Patriotic Catholic Association
China's Catholics have been allowed to practice their religion under a government-supervised entity known as the Patriotic Catholic Association in which the government officially names bishops. 

Some — but not all — of those bishops have been quietly approved by the Vatican as well.
The Holy See has considered sacraments administered in the patriotic church valid, but the existence of the entity and the government's tight control of it has for decades has prompted many observant Catholics to practice their faith in a parallel, "underground" Catholic church, whose members see themselves as true followers of the church in Rome. 

The underground church is declared illegal and its members have been routinely subjected to arrest and ruthless persecution.
Believers take part in a weekend mass at an underground Catholic church in Tianjin.
An agreement between the Holy See and the Chinese government would allow the Vatican to operate more openly in China, but grant greater control to Beijing over the church's decisions.

Zen expresses frustration
At the prayer gathering in Hong Kong, Kwok’s frustration was echoed by Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired bishop of Hong Kong and a longtime critic of Beijing, who prayed quietly with the group.

In recent weeks he has termed any agreement between the Vatican and Beijing that would allow China control over the church as “evil.”
Retired archbishop of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen gestures during an interview in Hong Kong, Friday, Feb. 9, 2018.

News reports have said the agreement would legitimize the government-appointed bishops and force those in the underground church to retire. 

The reports say the pope in Rome would have a final say over the approval of bishops, but Zen has voiced concern that Beijing would only name bishops loyal to the communist leadership.
In this Jan. 10, 2018 photo made available the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, retired archbishop of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen hands a letter to Francis at the end of his weekly general audience.

“It’s something important for the whole church, this attitude of fidelity and disrespect for our faith. The faith and the discipline. It’s a very serious matter to disregard centuries of doctrine,” Zen said. “They want everybody to come into the open and obey the government. They never say how they would deal with bishops in the underground. It’s obvious what they are going to do… They will not only eliminate bishops, but in some dioceses have no bishop, but some kind of [government] delegate.”
The Vatican has asked Catholics for time to work out details. 

Francis, speaking to reporters in early December, said: “It’s mostly political dialogue for the Chinese Church… which must go step by step delicately,” he said. 

“Patience is needed.”

Changing political landscape
Several Catholics in Hong Kong have said the move can be seen as an appeasement, coming at a fraught moment when China has grown more authoritarian under Xi Jinping.
On Sunday, China’s ruling party announced it would end presidential term limits, an extraordinary move by a government that sought to avoid the dangerous one-man control exerted by former leader Mao Zedong. 

The move will, in effect, allow Xi to serve for life. 

During his five years in office, Xi’s policies have attacked economic corruption as well as curtailed the work of human rights attorneys, labor organizers, investigative journalists and bloggers.
In December, the Vatican asked two bishops in the underground church in China to relinquish their roles to men approved by the government. 

Vatican envoys asked Bishop Zhuang Jianjian of Shantou to step down and cede control to Huang Bingzhang, an excommunicated bishop and a member of China’s acquiescent legislature, the National People’s Congress, according to asianews.it.
Guo Xijin, another underground bishop in Fujian province, was asked to serve as an assistant to Zhan Silu, another government appointed bishop. 

Previously, the Vatican had said that both men had been elevated illegally by the government.
Opponents see it as an unusual intrusion, even violation, of the church’s authority. 

They are also concerned about signs that the government has restricted religious practice, such as orders that followers not bring children to worship.
News of the Vatican’s negotiations prompted several professors to start a petition against any agreement that would cede control to Beijing. 

More than 2,000 people have signed.
“We think the Catholic Church has appeal [for] the Chinese people exactly because it has refused to compromise with the Chinese authority,” said Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, a retired political science professor in Hong Kong, and one of the petitions organizers. 

“The first Christians of China were the very, very poor peasants in the cultural revolution days. My argument is if the Vatican makes a compromise with Beijing, the Catholic church loses that moral and spiritual appeal. And it doesn’t benefit the church.”

The Manchurian Pope

Catholics warn of church schism if Vatican makes a deal with China
By Simon Denyer 

Chinese Catholics pray at morning Mass in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Beijing on Jan. 30. 

BEIJING — A group of influential Catholics published an open letter Monday to express their shock and disappointment about a report that the Vatican could soon reach a deal with the Chinese government, warning that it could create a schism in the church in China.
The Holy See has been in negotiations for several years with the Chinese Communist Party and is now believed to be close to an agreement over the appointment of bishops in China.
That agreement, under which responsibility for the appointment of bishops would probably be shared between the Vatican and the government, could pave the way for the eventual reestablishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Vatican, cut in 1951. 

The deal is also expected to confer Vatican recognition on seven state-appointed bishops, who had been excommunicated by previous popes.
But 15 leading Catholics, many of them from Hong Kong, have written to bishops all over the world arguing that the Chinese government should play no role in the selection of bishops. 

The group argued that the moral integrity of the seven “illicit” bishops was questionable.
“They do not have the trust of the faithful, and have never repented publicly,” they wrote. 

“If they were to be recognized as legitimate, the faithful in Greater China would be plunged into confusion and pain, and schism would be created in the Church in China.”
The 15 Catholics include university professors, lecturers, researchers, human rights activists and lawyers. 

They warned that a deal with the Chinese government could do irreparable harm and that recent regulations put into effect this month allow for even greater government scrutiny over religion in China.
The Communist Party in China, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, has repeatedly destroyed crosses and churches, while the state-backed China Patriotic Catholic Association maintains its heavy-handed control over the church.
In his keynote speech to a major Communist Party Congress in October, Xi underlined that the religion in China must also be “Chinese in orientation” and guided by the Communist Party to adapt to socialist society.
The Catholics complained that religious persecution has never stopped in China and warned that they could not see any possibility that it would, even if a deal were reached.
“We are worried that the agreement would not only fail to guarantee the limited freedom desired by the Church, but also damage the Church’s holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity, and deal a blow to the Church’s moral power,” they wrote.
“We earnestly ask you, with the love on the people of God, appeal to the Holy See: Please rethink the current agreement, and stop making an irreversible and regrettable mistake.”
Senior Vatican officials argue that any deal would help Catholics in China practice and evangelize their faith. 

There are about 10 million Catholics in China, but their numbers are dwarfed by the fast-growing number of Protestants, and some officials hope a deal could help Catholicism keep pace.
But retired Hong Kong cardinal Joseph Zen has been at the forefront of those arguing that a deal with a “totalitarian” regime would be immoral and a sellout.

The Manchurian Pope

Communist China is manipulating Francis as it bulldozes churches
By Robert Royal

In several decades of living in Washington, D.C., I’ve met my share of scamps and scalawags, fabulists and outright liars. 

It would take a modern Dante to determine which circle of Inferno each type of misbehavior merited. But of one thing, I am certain: at least in my own experience, I’ve never encountered more brazen and manipulative liars than Communist Chinese officials responsible for relations with religious believers.
Which is what makes it so disturbing that last week reports surfaced that the Vatican asked two underground Chinese bishops, loyal to Rome, to step aside in order to allow two bishops of the Patriotic Church, submissive to the Communist regime, to take their places. 

That news drove the heroic 86-year-old former Cardinal of Hong Kong Joseph Zen to go to Rome without an appointment, stand outside the Casa Santa Marta, and ask to be allowed to present a letter from the underground believers – who are willing to resist despite personal costs – to Francis. Reliable sources say the pope received the letter and promised to read it. 

(Cardinal Zen has published an account of these events this morning that confirms the basic story and adds that he is pessimistic about the line the Vatican is pursuing. In addition, he says that the government is cracking down on religious institutions, and starting February 1, “attendance to Mass in the underground will no longer be tolerated.”)
Cardinal Zen has been energetic in warning about the unreliability of agreements with the Communists. 

(Rumors of an imminent agreement between China and the Vatican have been floating around for a couple of years now, without anything definite being revealed.) 

Asia News, a publication of the Vatican, itself reacted to last week’s news with a warning about substituting “illegitimate” bishops for “legitimate” ones. 

The ChiComs (as we used to call them during the Cold War) are smart and shrewd. 

They know how to manipulate Western values, in this case, “unifying” the churches, i.e., the religious inclination to think we can fix all problems with dialogue, building bridges, diplomatic arrangements.
Meanwhile, China continues to cut crosses off church buildings, close some, dynamite still others. The New York Times reported just two weeks ago that China had destroyed the Golden Lampstand church – with 60,000 worshippers the largest evangelical community in the country. 

The reason: the large, conspicuous edifice had been “secretly” constructed, had failed to get official building permits, etc. 

These are the usual fig leaves of tyrannical regimes all over the world when they attack religion. 

I’ve heard top Chinese leaders blame local authorities for “excesses and errors,” but these seem to recur with a suspect regularity that no one seems to take steps to stop.
The Chinese Communists studied the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the liberation of the nations behind the Iron Curtain thanks to John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and many others in the West who kept the pressure on Moscow. 

They appreciate the power of religion and clearly believe they can prevent Christianity from doing in China what it did in Poland and elsewhere. 

The tools are familiar: co-opt when you can, persecute and destroy when you can as well, and control information to make it appear you are simply asking for reasonable law and order within your borders.
From the regime’s point of view, there’s great need for all that. 

Most Chinese have a vague attachment to old folk religions. 

Maybe 15 percent are Buddhist and generally quiet – except in Tibet where resistance to Beijing remains alive. 

And then there are Christians, lots of them, if not a large percentage – yet. 

Reliable figures are hard to get, but 60 million (at a minimum) is a reasonable estimate. 

It’s safe to say that more Christians are in church on a Sunday morning in China than in all of Europe. And that despite potentially serious consequences for worshipping in “unapproved” congregations.
Protestants probably make up around two-thirds of that number, but the Catholic Church, of course, has a stronger institutional structure. 

The Chinese are used to playing a long game. 

Given that Christianity is growing rapidly there, the regime will have a hard time if there are tens of millions more Christians who believe every human being is made in the image and likeness of God, meaning they possess human dignity and freedom.
One of the common foreign-policy questions about China is precisely how Communist it is – and therefore whether it has in its very DNA the old Marxist drive to stamp out the “opium of the people,” i.e., religion. 

The economy is managed, but not wrecked along ideologically Marxist lines, as in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. 

It’s not exactly capitalist, of course, but there’s some very serious innovation and entrepreneurship all the same. 

The heavy hand of the state is nonetheless quite evident, not least in the population control measures that even the Chinese now know will bring decades – at least – of trouble as their population ages. But is it a hard atheist system?
I wrote about the history of Chinese persecution of religious believers in my book The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century. 

At the time, the Falun Gong, about 10 million people, were being ruthlessly persecuted by the Chinese because that basically traditional spiritual movement was “a threat to social stability.” 

And yet it was said then and now that there were numbers of Christians in the Chinese Communist Party as well.
Whatever China’s ideological composition, the independence of the Church is something that many Christians fought and died for over centuries in the Christian countries of Europe. 

Independence from political regimes is crucial so that the Church can be free to carry out its spiritual mission, not only evangelizing people but working and speaking out, whatever regime it lives under, about justice and right order in society.
The Vatican seems to be stumbling in its relations with a regime that we can be sure will not respect the freedom of the Church since it doesn’t respect the freedom and dignity of its own people. 

Vatican negotiators would do well to remember the lessons of the Communist Era in Europe, particularly Solzhenitsyn’s warning that we must fully understand the nature of Communist regimes and not give in to the illusion that the split between us and them “may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations.” 

Because the split is spiritual, deeply so, not political.

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?