Friday, March 29, AD 2024 3:50am

PopeWatch: Disaster

Sandro Magister takes a look at the Vatican-China deal two years later:

 

In effect, almost two years after the signing of the accord, for the Holy See the bottom line is a disaster.

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Not counting Hong Kong and Macao, which have separate statutes, there are 135 dioceses and apostolic prefectures in China. And of these, at the time the agreement was signed, only 72 were under the leadership of a bishop, just over half.

Today those with a bishop at their head are still holding steady at 72. So with almost as many dioceses that continue to remain vacant, even though one of the Holy See’s aims in signing the agreement was precisely to fill these gaps.

The only two new episcopal ordinations that have taken place after September 22 2018 – those of Anthony Yao Shun, ordinary of the diocese of Jining, and Stephen Xu Hongwei, coadjutor of the diocese of Hanzhong – are both from April 2019 and had been arranged before the signing of the agreement.

But it is instructive to analyze in greater detail the changes that have occurred in the past two years.

Heading into the signing of the accord, 50 Chinese dioceses were governed by “official” bishops, meaning recognized by both Rome and Beijing, and 17 by “clandestine” bishops, meaning recognized by Rome but not by the Chinese government.

In addition, however, there were 7 bishops hit with excommunication, 5 of whom had been installed by the regime in as many dioceses deemed by Rome still vacant, and 2 instead installed in dioceses already run by bishops who are legitimate in the eyes of Rome but clandestine according to the Chinese authorities.

So then, upon the signing of the agreement Pope Francis lifted the excommunication of those 7 bishops and assigned to each of them the governance of their diocese of residence. Also in the two dioceses where there were already legitimate but clandestine bishops, the solution adopted by Rome was to entrust the governance to the two formerly excommunicated bishops. To make this possible the 90-year-old bishop Peter Zhuang Jianjian was removed from the diocese of Shantou, while in the diocese of Xiapu-Mindong the 60-year-old bishop in office, Vincent Guo Xijin, was demoted to auxiliary.

In both cases the transfer of power has been rough, and in the second it is still far from being smoothed over. Bishop Guo’s courageous refusal to bow to the regime’s “diktats” irreconcilable with the Catholic faith, which include signing up for a so-called “independent Church,” has come at the expense of a hailstorm of retaliation, expulsion from his home, and the complete loss of his freedom.

In the judgment of the most ardent Vatican supporters of the accord – expressed by Professor Agostino Giovagnoli of the Community of Sant’Egidio and  “Fides” agency director Gianni Valente – the diocese of Xiapu-Mindong was to be the model diocese, the one that was supposed to teach the world about the goodness of the agreement between the pope and China.

Instead, it is precisely the example of the continual one-sided giving in of the Holy See, without the slightest reciprocation from Beijing.

Mention has already been made of the immediate revocation by the pope of the excommunication of the 7 bishops most enthralled to the regime. But vice versa, it does not appear at all that Beijing has moved as swiftly to legitimize the clandestine bishops.

These latter, at the time of the signing of the agreement, governed 17 dioceses, while today they govern 12. But in the meantime the Chinese authorities have given their approval to only two of them: Peter Jin Lugang, 65, of the diocese of Nanyang , and Peter Lin Jiashan, 86, of the diocese of Fuzhou. The latter’s advanced age is not an isolated case. Among the clandestine bishops still in office, four more are over the age  of 80, and another died in 2019 at the age of 92. Some are counting on them going extinct through natural causes.

As for the rest, they are certainly not being treated well. Mention has been made of Bishop Guo of the diocese of Xiapu-Mindong, demoted to auxiliary and placed under surveillance. Augstine Cui Tai, coadjutor of the diocese of Xuanhua, has been under arrest since 2014. And Thaddeus Ma Daqin, bishop of Shanghai, has also been under house arrest since the day of his ordination in 2012, dismissed for quitting the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, the instrument with which the regime controls and regiments the Church. He wasn’t able to obtain clemency even with the act of public submission to which he bowed in 2015, amid the applause – also useless – of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” which called his gesture an exemplary model of “reconciliation between the Church in China and the Chinese government.”

For the sake of calling for these bishops to be set free, the Holy See or the pope has never expended so much as a word in public. Not to mention the mystery that still surrounds the disappearance of two other bishops who may not even be alive anymore: James Su Zhimin of the diocese of Baoding, who would be 88 today, and Cosmas Shi Enxiang of the diocese of Yixian, who would be 98 years old. Nothing has been heard of the former since 1996, the date of his last arrest, or of the latter since 2001.

Go here to read the rest.  This time Judas didn’t even get the thirty pieces of silver, unless the Vatican gangsters did get two billion a year from the Chinese regime.

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Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Tuesday, June 23, AD 2020 3:49am

This may be Vatican partial payback for the Chinese Communist $2 billion payoff per year that has come to light. Seems believable to me.

Father of Seven
Father of Seven
Tuesday, June 23, AD 2020 6:00am

I would be shocked, just shocked, if those homoheretics at the Vatican didn’t get the money.

ken
ken
Tuesday, June 23, AD 2020 7:39am

If the corruption and destruction of the hierarchy can be compared to flushing a toilet, are we at the point where the handle has just been released or are we closer to when the excrement leaves the bowl?

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