Cardinal Joseph Zen is auspiciously named. The cardinal’s courteous demeanour and gentle eloquence give him an air of serenity – which makes his attacks on the Chinese government all the more devastating.
Cardinal Zen, who is based in Hong Kong, has often warned the Vatican against any rapprochement with Beijing. He has criticised the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), the state-run “official” Church, for its subservience to the communist government. He has spoken frankly about the state’s human rights abuses.
But China’s most senior Catholic cleric is now sounding worried. The Beijing-Rome deal which he has long opposed could be around the corner.
Last week the cardinal pleaded with the Vatican not to “surrender” to Beijing, saying that making such a deal would be “destroying the Church”.
Nothing is officially confirmed yet, but there have been several recent indications that the Holy See wants to press towards an agreement with Beijing. The news agency Reuters claims to have spoken to Vatican sources who believe a deal is imminent. Similar rumours abound in the Catholic and secular press. This week’s Vatican warning to the underground Church not to ordain bishops without permission may also indicate that Rome is hoping for a compromise with the Chinese authorities.
Meanwhile, the Global Times, a semi-official publication of the Chinese Communist Party, has sounded hopeful about a possible deal, running an enthusiastic story headlined: “Under Pope Francis and President Xi, hopes rise for a thaw in ties.”
Part of the agreement could be a recognition of state-appointed CPCA bishops, or as Cardinal Zen calls them, “fake bishops”. In future, moreover, bishops would be selected by a combination of the state and the Vatican – and the cardinal fears that the Vatican would then be “totally subservient to an atheist government”.
Admittedly, this is all theoretical at the moment, and it would not be the first time that speculation about a deal came to nothing. Fenggang Yang, director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University, cautions against the “media enthusiasm”. He points out that many on both sides strongly oppose a deal.
Nevertheless, Yang says, both Pope Francis and President Xi have the power to force through an agreement. And both have reasons to do so: on Francis’s side, a commitment to dialogue and a hope that China’s Catholics might live a less restricted life. Xi’s motives, Yang says, are the good PR of making a deal with Francis, and “the broader economic and other benefits for China among countries with large Catholic populations, such as in Latin America, Southern Europe, and some African countries.”
But there is strong opposition on both sides. Beijing’s hardliners see religion as a subversive force which should be put in its place. Many Catholics share Cardinal Zen’s fears about “surrender” to an atheist dictatorship, especially when it comes to appointing bishops.
There are a little over 100 bishops in China. Most have been approved by both the Vatican and Beijing. But 30 are only part of the so-called “underground Church”, which operates without state approval, and sometimes at considerable risk to adherents. A Vatican deal could drive them further underground. The Church has also refused to recognise eight CPCA bishops who were ordained against the Holy See’s wishes.
The CPCA was created by Mao in 1957, effectively to absorb Catholicism into the totalitarian machine. The government has rejected everything Roman since 1949 – meaning, oddly enough, that the CPCA does not teach the dogma of the Assumption (proclaimed in 1950) as infallible.
Maybe it is a slight caricature to see the CPCA as a government poodle and the underground Church as the heroic resistance. Even Cardinal Zen has spoken warmly of the faith of many CPCA laity and clergy. But the CPCA is under the thumb of a government which has murdered, exiled and silenced innumerable Catholics (among others) – and which has, if anything, intensified the persecution in the last few years.
A recent report from the charity China Aid concluded that “Persecution campaigns made 2016 one of the most tyrannical years since the Cultural Revolution.” Local authorities have demolished churches and there have been reports of pastors being tortured in prison. The government has drafted a bill which could shut down churches and ban children from receiving religious education.
This is what Cardinal Zen believes he is fighting when he opposes the deal. But his loyalty to the office of the papacy is at the centre of his spirituality: the cardinal’s order, the Salesians, have a special devotion to the Roman Pontiff.
If a deal goes through, the cardinal told the Wall Street Journal last week, he would advise China’s Catholics not to rebel. “We will have to be loyal to the Pope (the papacy, the authority of the Vicar of Christ) in spite of the Pope.”
So the Catholic conscience – an attituded of obedience to the Pope in non-doctrinal, legislative matters – might achieve what the most powerful dictatorship on earth could not: making Cardinal Joseph Zen fall silent.
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