This month sees the trial in Hong Kong of Cardinal Joseph Zen. He and four defendants face charges of failing properly to register a fund (now defunct) to help anti-government protesters in the island. The 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund was established to help people arrested for taking part in pro-democracy protests in 2019 and was disbanded after the authorities intervened.
This may seem like a minor matter; in practice it is a reflection of the importance of the 90-year-old cardinal in the eyes of the mainline Chinese authorities who are exercising increasingly repressive policies in respect of religion in Hong Kong as well as on the Chinese mainland. The trial of Cardinal Zen and his friends reflects Beijing’s response to his criticisms of the deal between the Chinese government and the Vatican about the appointment of bishops, whereby Rome has the right of veto over bishops appointed by Beijing. The deal was struck in 2018 and renewed for another two years in 2020.
At the time Cardinal Zen took the view that the deal would “kill” the underground Chinese Catholic Church to which an estimated half of mainland China’s 12 million Catholics belong. Indeed, he went to Rome in 2020 to express his concerns; the Pope refused to see him. When he was arrested in May, the Vatican merely expressed its “concern” at the news.
Cardinal Zen is, in other words, an inconvenience, an impediment to the implementation of the deal between the Holy See and China. He is a supporter of the democratic movement in Hong Kong; he shows precisely why it is that this movement includes a disproportionate number of Christians, including Catholics. The social teaching of the Church includes a commitment to justice; Cardinal Zen is simply putting that teaching into practice.
Part of the Cardinal’s pastoral work – remarkable for a 90-year-old – is as prison chaplain, sometimes visiting as many as three prisons a day. That role includes pastoral care of imprisoned pro-democracy protestors and for them his visits are invaluable.
Quite what the deal between the Chinese Communist Party and the Vatican entails can be seen in the meeting last month of the National Congress of Catholicism in China. Delegates to the Congress unanimously accepted the work report of the committee on Church efforts and activities in the promotion of patriotism, socialism, and sinicisation in the Catholic Church as approved by President Xi Jinping. Sinicisation is a policy that aims to ensure that institutions such as the Church accept the core values of socialism, autonomy and support of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. That rather dispiriting conformity is what it takes for an institution to survive in President Xi’s China. Small wonder that Cardinal Zen finds it wanting.
But before condemning the Vatican outright for its co-operation with the Communist Party of China, we should bear in mind that the Church has been here before. Sinicisation seems very like the 21st-century equivalent of Gallicanism, the movement whereby the 18th-century Church in France conformed itself to an absolute monarchy. There is something in common between the submission of the bishops at the National Congress to the Communist Party and the 1682 Declaration of the Clergy in France, the first article of which reads:
“St Peter and the popes, his successors, and the Church itself have dominion from God only over things spiritual and not over things temporal and civil. Therefore, kings and sovereigns are not beholden to the Church in deciding temporal things. They cannot be deposed by the Church and their subjects cannot be absolved by the church from their oaths of allegiance.”
Sometimes conformity to the civil authorities is what it takes for the Church to survive in an authoritarian regime as an alternative to persecution by it, as the underground Catholic Church in China was and is persecuted. We should recall that Pope Francis, a member of the society of Jesus, which sought to convert China in the 17th century; Francis may see the agreement with the Chinese Communist Party as a means to promote that end. Unfortunately, it entails muting criticism of the activities of the Chinese government, including its repression of the Uyghur Muslims as well as the expression of democratic dissent in Hong Kong.
Cardinal Zen is the embodiment of a very different kind of Catholicism, which is less deferential to the state, more vocal in its support of human rights, more democratic in spirit. And however inconvenient it may be, he is entitled to the support of the Vatican. Rome cannot ignore the prosecution of a prelate. Pope Francis must show solidarity with Cardinal Zen by condemning this month’s trial. There may be gains for the Church from its policy of conformity with the Chinese state, but those gains can be too dearly bought. Ite ad Joseph.
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