Vatican's Crypto-Communism: Francis Kowtows to China

In capitulating on the issue of bishop appointments, the Vatican loses a 1,000-year struggle.
BY WILL INBODEN

Henry IV, king of the Germans, surrenders his crown to Pope Gregory VII, who sits enthroned. (Woodcut by John Foxe/Rare Books and Manuscripts Library/Ohio State University Libraries/Wikimedia Commons)

While the Winter Olympics in South Korea are dominating the headlines from Asia this week, surreptitious negotiations now taking place in Beijing may prove more consequential for the eventual course of the 21st century. 

According to news reports, the Vatican might be nearing an agreement with the Chinese government that would lead to mutual diplomatic recognition between Beijing and Rome. 

However, the agreement would be entirely on Beijing’s terms, with the Holy See ceding authority to the Chinese Communist Party for the appointment of bishops and granting the party effective control of the Catholic Church in China. 

If true, that would amount to a stunning unilateral concession by Francis rather than a negotiated compromise.
The geopolitical stakes are enormous, embroiling the world’s largest nation of 1.4 billion and the world’s largest religious group of 1.2 billion. 

The population overlap between the two is small — there are only 10 million or so Catholics in China, split between the underground church and the one church controlled by Beijing — numbers that pale in comparison to the estimated 70 million or more (perhaps many more) Chinese Protestants.
Yet the resolution of this dispute will do much to shape whether China continues to be ruled by an officially atheistic and increasingly aggressive government, or begins to evolve in a more pacific and liberal direction.

For readers unfamiliar with Catholic theology and church governance, this is not a mere administrative trifle but an issue central to Catholicism’s beliefs, identity, and history going back millennia. 
One of medieval Europe’s most cataclysmic events came with the investiture controversy of the 11th century over whether emperors or popes had the authority to appoint bishops and priests.
The dispute climaxed in 1076 and 1077, when Emperor Henry IV, the German monarch, failed in his challenge to Pope Gregory VII, and the humiliated emperor found himself instead a supplicant standing in the snow outside the pope’s palace at Canossa, groveling for forgiveness and conceding the church’s authority over religious offices.
The issue lies at the core distinctions between church and state.
Churches and other religious organizations have the authority to choose their own clergy, determine their theology, and govern themselves in spiritual matters, while respecting and deferring to the authority of the state in political matters.
In the case of bishops and priests, Catholic teaching holds them to be Christ’s representatives here on earth, the successors of the original Apostles, whose highest loyalties are to the Pope and ultimately to Christ in heaven.
As a Protestant in the reformed tradition who holds to the priesthood of all believers, I myself do not have any ecclesial stake in the current negotiations between Beijing and the Vatican.
But as an American who believes in religious liberty, human rights, and not capitulating to the pretensions of an aggressive atheistic government that seeks to squelch any independent civil society, I find the Vatican’s reported concessions of serious concern.
So do many Catholics.
The estimable George Weigel, a leading Catholic intellectual and a biographer of Pope John Paul II, wrote in a piece for Foreign Policy:
John Paul and his successor, Benedict XVI, could have had the deal now being proposed by Beijing, or something very similar to it. 
Both declined, because they knew it was not a step toward greater freedom for the Catholic Church in China but a step toward greater Catholic subservience to the Chinese Communist regime, a betrayal of persecuted Catholics throughout the People’s Republic of China, and an impediment to future evangelism in China. 
Both may also have weighed the fact that any formal Vatican diplomatic exchange with Beijing would necessitate ending diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the first Chinese democracy in history — and that would be a bad signal to the rest of the world about the Vatican’s commitment to Catholicism’s own social doctrine.
Weigel’s points highlight the especially sensitive issue of the seven Chinese bishops who had previously been appointed by the government over the fierce objections of previous popes who actually excommunicated at least some of those faux-bishops.
The provisional agreement between the Holy See and Beijing would reverse those excommunications and affirm those bishops as legitimate appointments. 
This is why so many Catholics who have stayed faithful to the Vatican through supporting China’s persecuted underground Catholic Church are remonstrating against the proposed deal.
Witness this open letter to Francis, for example.
One of those faithful Chinese Catholics who has maintained his loyalty to Rome and been a courageous voice for democracy and human rights is Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong.
Based on decades of firsthand experience trying to shepherd his flock and protect it from Beijing’s encroachments, the wily cardinal has spoken out against the Vatican’s concessions, and even reportedly traveled to Rome the other week to appeal to Francis.
I was privileged to meet Zen in 2007 when as a National Security Council staff member I helped set up a visit between him and President George W. Bush in the White House residence.
Their meeting sparked the ire of Beijing, which then as now regarded the cardinal as an irksome troublemaker, but it also helped demonstrate to China that the United States stood with those around the world advocating for democracy and human rights in their own countries.
Previous American presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush enjoyed close relations with their papal counterparts, especially when John Paul occupied the papacy.
Unfortunately Francis does not inherit his predecessor’s steadfast opposition to tyranny, nor has President Donald Trump yet taken up the mantle of America’s historic support for freedom abroad.
The distaste the two hold for each other also limits the White House’s ability to quietly sway Rome away from its embrace of Beijing.
The newly confirmed ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback, is a devout Catholic with strong Vatican ties, so hopefully he is already engaging in some vigorous quiet diplomacy with the Holy See to forestall this looming capitulation to China.
Meanwhile, perhaps Trump could also invite Zen back for a return visit to the White House.

Vatican's Crypto-Communism

THE VATICAN’S CHINA WHITEWASH

By Daniel Mark

Like many others, I received with skepticism the news of a possible deal to resolve the long-standing dispute between China and the Vatican concerning the appointment of bishops and other ecclesial matters. 

I recognize the need for measured dissent, since none of us can say definitively what approach will, in the long run, be best for the Catholic Church in China. 

But cautious deference to the insiders’ greater experience in diplomacy and knowledge of the deal’s particulars does not lessen my dismay and bewilderment at recent remarks by Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. 

Speaking to Vatican Insider, Sorondo opined: “Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.”
Sorondo’s comments throughout the interview range from naïve to ludicrous, and they verge on an apology for one of the world’s most repressive regimes. 

The bishop lauds China for its lack of shantytowns, as though the country’s widespread poverty were a secret. 

The absence of drug use among China’s young, which the bishop cites, is about as plausible as the absence of homosexuals in Iran claimed by that country’s former president. 

And in praising China’s implementation of Laudato Si’ and defense of the Paris Climate Accord, Sorondo seems oblivious to Beijing’s famously awful smog. 

“What people don’t realize,” the bishop muses, “is that the central value in China is work, work, work.” 

What the bishop doesn’t realize is that China is a totalitarian state.
There is no end to what could be said about China’s atrocious record on human rights, from the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees to the detention of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo, who died in custody in July without adequate treatment for his liver cancer. 

But let me leave aside the restrictions on political and economic liberty and stick with a subject I follow closely—religious freedom—which should be of special concern to the Church (and to all people who affirm the moral principles of Dignitatis Humanae).
The recent Communist Party conference in China entrenched the incumbent leader and his eponymous ideology, Xi Jinping Thought. 

This ideology entails the “sinicization” of religion, a process of manipulating and subduing faith so as to render it compatible with the state’s totalitarian aims. 

The brand-new Regulations on Religious Affairs strike at believers by tying religion to extremism, including separatism and terrorism, thereby providing the pretext for suppressing almost any religious activity. 

Practitioners of Falun Gong, like some other groups labeled “cults,” are already familiary with this tactic. 

They are victims of some of Beijing’s worst abuses, having long been subjected to the evil of organ harvesting. (A Chinese representative participated prominently in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ February Summit on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism—to some protests.)-
Uyghur Muslims in China’s west are banned from fasting during Ramadan, attending mosque if they are under age eighteen, growing beards deemed “abnormal,” and even giving certain Muslim names to their children. 

The government confiscates their Korans and prayer mats and even places minders in their homes, to ensure that they do not pray or fast. 

China’s war on Tibetan Buddhists is well known. 

The government uses its influence internationally against the Dalai Lama. 

The Panchem Lama was detained by authorities at age six, more than twenty years ago, and his whereabouts remain unknown. 

This past summer, officials demolished much of Larung Gar, the main center of Tibetan Buddhist learning, leaving thousands of monks and nuns homeless. 

Similar destruction then took place at the Yachen Gar center.
Christians in China have likewise faced persecution, not least from the government’s assault on affiliation with underground churches. 

In January, the government razed a megachurch serving fifty thousand worshipers. 

In Zhejiang Province, authorities have waged a long campaign to remove crosses from the tops of churches, with the “decapitations” numbering around two thousand. 

In early 2017, the pastor of the unregistered Living Stone Church was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for “divulging state secrets,” and a former deacon was sentenced to five years for “illegal business operations.” 

In May, the government detained underground Catholic Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou—his fourth detention since the previous September. 

Even for state-approved entities, surveillance, harassment, and violence complement the government’s usual regimen of registration and regulation of all church activity. 

With China’s autocrats deeply fearful of the spread of Christianity in their country, these are just a few examples of the repression they perpetrate.
A friend of mine who is an astute commentator on Church affairs speculated that Bishop Sorondo’s words were intended to burnish China’s image and thereby put the pending deal in a better light. 

If that’s the case, then the Vatican is taking the wrong approach to its messaging. 

If Church leaders wish to defend a rapprochement, they should first acknowledge that the communist dictatorship’s treatment of believers is harsh and unpredictable, and then argue that, under the circumstances, this is the best way to move forward: A deal will increase the Vatican’s control over the Church in China, open the door to further normalization of relations with China and regularization of the Church there, and bring some much-needed relief to the faithful. 

This argument might prove unpersuasive, but at least the bishops would not be peddling what I will understatedly call a whitewash.
As Hadley Arkes taught us thirty years ago in the book that became this magazine’s namesake, in politics the critical thing is the character of the regime. 

To deny the brutal, authoritarian character of the Chinese regime can only serve to blind the Vatican’s diplomats to the real nature of their interlocutors and, thereby, vastly increase the risk of error. 

The Church should stand as a witness against an ideology that claims the whole of human life for itself—that demands that all be rendered unto Caesar. 

At least it should not flatter Caesar unduly.