Trust, But Verify

The Holy See has reportedly asked two Chinese bishops to stand aside to make way for illicitly ordained, Chinese government-backed counterparts.

A Vatican delegation asked Bishop Peter Zhuang of Shantou and Bishop Jospeh Guo Xijin of Mindong to retire or accept demotion in order to smooth relations with the Chinese government.
Asia News, the outlet of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, reports that 88-year-old Bishop Zhuang received a letter dated 26 October asking him to resign to make way for the government-backed Bishop Huang Bingzhang.

Bishop Huang Bingzhang.

 Bishop Huang was excommunicated in 2011 after being consecrated without Vatican approval. He is also a member of the National People’s Congress, the Chinese parliament.

Asia News reports that Bishop Zhuang was escorted to Beijing, where he met Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, former president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, who told him to retire – but with the proviso that he could nominate three priests, one of whom Bishop Huang would appoint as his vicar general.

I agree with National Review's Michael Brendan Dougherty:


 ... I find it difficult to trust the Chinese government given its history. I worry that a deal will give diplomatic cover to renew the persecution of non-conforming members of the underground Church, and heighten the policy of Sinicization. I also worry that Vatican officials, having invested so much in this approach will be slow to take offense if the Chinese government again promotes its own men against the wishes of the Church. A friend of mine who grew up in Hong Kong, and believed himself growing up as a witness to a Chinese Catholic vanguard lamented to me, “Everybody, and I mean everybody, knows somebody who was murdered, or tortured, or imprisoned or disappeared to defend the principle that was just abandoned.”