I Can't Wait Until Nancy Pelosi Gets to Pick Bishops!
In four brief statements issued yesterday, the Vatican announced two developments with respect to the People’s Republic of China:
Beijing and the Holy See have signed an agreement on the protocol for the appointment of Catholic bishops in the PRC. The Vatican gave no information on what the protocol is.
Pope Francis “has decided to readmit to full ecclesial communion” eight bishops (one of them deceased) who had been approved by Beijing but not by Rome. That means that now all of China’s 75 (by my count) active bishops are in communion with the pope.
Fifteen of those 75 are “underground” bishops. That is, they’re not recognized by the Chinese government. It’s natural to speculate that Beijing will, in a quid pro quo, recognize them eventually. If it does, that might please the Vatican, but as for the bishops themselves, and for many of the faithful they pastor, Beijing’s “blessing” is exactly what they seek to avoid. They consider the government’s presence in the life of the Church to be pernicious.
The more plausible outcome for Chinese Catholics who reject government interference in the Church is that the “underground” character of their communities will be dissolved in a gradual, indirect manner, one that would be in the style of both the Vatican and the Chinese government. Already four of the underground bishops are well past the official retirement age of 75, and all 15 will have reached that milestone by 2038. As each one retires, Rome and Beijing can simply replace him with a bishop who belongs to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (PCA), the organization that was established, in the 1950s, as the legal, government-controlled alternative to the Church, which had been effectively banned after the Communist takeover in 1949.
Further on in the article:
From speaking with Catholics who know the Church in China firsthand and, for the sake of Church unity, favor Vatican concessions to Beijing, I gather that they see underground diehards much as many mainstream Catholics in America regard Latin Mass traditionalists: as cranky and disagreeable, disruptive and dissident. Many Catholics who only want to build up the Church in the challenging environment that is the PRC consider the underground holdouts, not the Chinese government, to be the primary obstacle to their objective.
The last high-profile demonstration of underground resistance was in 2012, when Thaddeus Ma Daquin, whom both Rome and Beijing had approved as an auxiliary bishop of Shanghai, renounced the PCA at his ordination. He was disappeared after the ceremony. Three years later, under house arrest, he recanted. For that he was praised, last year in La Civilità Cattolica, a Jesuit publication out of Rome, as “a Chinese bishop with a healthy realism. . . . Even if he is currently under house arrest, he is trying to engage positively with his government.”
Beijing and the Holy See have signed an agreement on the protocol for the appointment of Catholic bishops in the PRC. The Vatican gave no information on what the protocol is.
Pope Francis “has decided to readmit to full ecclesial communion” eight bishops (one of them deceased) who had been approved by Beijing but not by Rome. That means that now all of China’s 75 (by my count) active bishops are in communion with the pope.
Fifteen of those 75 are “underground” bishops. That is, they’re not recognized by the Chinese government. It’s natural to speculate that Beijing will, in a quid pro quo, recognize them eventually. If it does, that might please the Vatican, but as for the bishops themselves, and for many of the faithful they pastor, Beijing’s “blessing” is exactly what they seek to avoid. They consider the government’s presence in the life of the Church to be pernicious.
The more plausible outcome for Chinese Catholics who reject government interference in the Church is that the “underground” character of their communities will be dissolved in a gradual, indirect manner, one that would be in the style of both the Vatican and the Chinese government. Already four of the underground bishops are well past the official retirement age of 75, and all 15 will have reached that milestone by 2038. As each one retires, Rome and Beijing can simply replace him with a bishop who belongs to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (PCA), the organization that was established, in the 1950s, as the legal, government-controlled alternative to the Church, which had been effectively banned after the Communist takeover in 1949.
Further on in the article:
From speaking with Catholics who know the Church in China firsthand and, for the sake of Church unity, favor Vatican concessions to Beijing, I gather that they see underground diehards much as many mainstream Catholics in America regard Latin Mass traditionalists: as cranky and disagreeable, disruptive and dissident. Many Catholics who only want to build up the Church in the challenging environment that is the PRC consider the underground holdouts, not the Chinese government, to be the primary obstacle to their objective.
The last high-profile demonstration of underground resistance was in 2012, when Thaddeus Ma Daquin, whom both Rome and Beijing had approved as an auxiliary bishop of Shanghai, renounced the PCA at his ordination. He was disappeared after the ceremony. Three years later, under house arrest, he recanted. For that he was praised, last year in La Civilità Cattolica, a Jesuit publication out of Rome, as “a Chinese bishop with a healthy realism. . . . Even if he is currently under house arrest, he is trying to engage positively with his government.”
Labels: Bishops, China, Pope Francis
posted by jope @ September 24, 2018
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