Beijing, the Vatican and the Zen
factor By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - Spring has sprung in the
Northern Hemisphere, yet a wintry chill has fallen
over the relationship between China and the
Vatican since the appointment of Joseph Zen as
cardinal of Hong Kong. Still, there are
spring-like signs of hope, developments and
budding breakthroughs as both sides in recent days
have expressed their willingness to come to an
early agreement for the normalization of ties.
In Beijing, people who have been following
the Vatican issue for the past few years are
shaking their heads. They feel frustrated once
again at the new setback in their effort to
normalize ties with the Holy See. To them the Zen
appointment is more complicated
than the decision
by the late pope John Paul II in 2000 to canonize
120 Chinese saints on October 1, China's National
Day. Beijing had then told the Vatican to
choose any other day, considering that October 1
was a date reserved for national pride. Chinese
Catholics, too, did not want to be forced to
choose between celebrating their state and
celebrating their religion on October 1. In other
words, state and religion had to be kept
separated. But Rome did not budge. For years
afterward, China cut all contacts with the
Vatican.
The reaction this time has been
different, but there is great wonder and
puzzlement in Beijing. "The holy war that the
Vatican didn't want to unleash against Islamic
fundamentalism was instead declared against China?
Does the Holy See want to topple the Beijing
government just as it contributed to undermining
the governments of the former Eastern Bloc,
starting with Catholic Poland? Does the Vatican
consider China just the last brick in the old
communist wall?"
So far these questions
are without answers. But nobody is losing their
head in Beijing.
On April 3, the official
China Daily reported that Ye Xiaowen, director of
the state Administration of Religious Affairs,
suggested some flexibility on the thorny issue of
the appointment of the bishops. "We have always
been appointing and consecrating our bishops; this
is what we must stick to," said Ye. But he added
that the Chinese side was open to consultations.
Ye was responding to statements released
by Vatican Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni
Lajolo. On March 25 he declared to the Hong Kong
press that Pope Benedict would not hesitate to
travel to Beijing to show his "admiration for the
great Chinese people" and all he was waiting for
was an invitation from Beijing and the fulfillment
of necessary conditions.
Still, it is not
clear to Beijing what the Vatican really wants to
do about normalizing ties. In fact, Lajolo's
statement was a response to a semi-official
declaration from the Beijing-sponsored Chinese
Catholic Patriotic Association, which comprises
Catholics loyal to Beijing as opposed to the
underground church, which partly or totally does
not recognize Chinese government authority over
it.
On March 8, Liu Bainian, vice chairman
of the association, said many Chinese believed
Zen's promotion showed the Church wanted to
challenge Beijing just as the late pope John Paul
II confronted Soviet communism in Poland. "If
China's bishops were all like him, then it would
be dangerous like Poland," Liu told Reuters.
"Bishop Zen is widely known as an opponent of
communism."
On March 7, Chinese Foreign
Minister Li Zhaoxing reprimanded the Vatican,
warning it not to interfere with Chinese internal
affairs.
The bone of contention between
the Vatican and China is not over Taiwan; it is
agreed that Beijing's, not Taipei's, jurisdiction
will be recognized. The issue is the appointment
of bishops, and whether the state has authority
over the Church or vice versa. Here the two worlds
seem unable to connect.
Certainly the
differences between today's China and the Soviet
bloc of 25 years ago are enormous. But just as
enormous is the difference in influence between
Catholics in China and those in Poland.
In
Poland, Catholics were the majority; indeed, there
were Christians of various sects all over the
Soviet bloc, and the pope had at least some
influence. But in China, Christians are a tiny
minority. There are about 10 million Catholics,
less than 1% of the Chinese population.
Furthermore they are divided, with two-thirds
"underground", with a hostile or at best gray
relationship with Beijing, and one-third loyal to
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
There
are a lot more Protestants, maybe as many as 100
million, but they are very disorganized, divided
into all kinds of congregations, mostly of a
Chinese type that is very unorthodox, and all
paying little or no attention to the pope.
Based on this, Beijing should have no
reason to worry about the appointment of the new
cardinal in Hong Kong. But the Chinese, who
believe that power comes from knowledge (as
defined and distributed by an effective propaganda
machine), take more seriously than even Josef
Stalin the potentially divisive power of the pope.
Beijing considers Zen the principal
inspiration of opposition in Hong Kong against the
central government. Yet it wanted to play ball
with him and was showing it was willing to
compromise. Two years ago Beijing appointed Donald
Tsang chief executive of Hong Kong, getting rid of
his predecessor Tung Chee-hwa before the end of
his term.
Tsang is a devout Catholic,
going to mass every day, and for this reason he
represents an enormous opening for the CCP, which
even today prohibits its members from joining a
religious affiliation. For Beijing, Tsang's
appointment was a friendly hand offered to
then-bishop Zen and the Vatican, an offer of
collaboration. Moreover it signaled that even in
mainland China more doors might open for
Catholics. But the offer was not accepted, if it
ever was understood, and neither were other offers
for diplomatic normalization - possibly similarly
misunderstood - extended to the Vatican in 2005.
Now the central issue is the role of
Cardinal Zen in Hong Kong. At the end of January
he signed a public statement asking for
constitutional reforms in Hong Kong and an early
election for the territory's chief executive
through democratic suffrage. In Beijing some
people think that Cardinal Zen's signature on the
document had nothing to do with religious matters,
that it was purely political, and that
independently of whether the document was right or
wrong it signals a dangerous trend of religious
interference in political issues.
Cardinal
Zen's was the second signature in the document;
the first was that of Anson Chan, a likely
candidate against Donald Tsang in an election. It
was as if, people in Beijing argue, the Democratic
presidential candidate in the US produced a public
statement first signed by the candidate himself
and then by the head of Catholics in the United
States. How would the Republican candidate feel?
Wouldn't public opinion in the US explode over
this "papal" interference?
Of course there
are many political naivities in Hong Kong, and
Cardinal Zen is an idealist, not a political
manipulator. But certainly the role of the
cardinal in Hong Kong is in uncharted waters on
the mainland, those of relations between state and
religion, and even in the West these are dangerous
waters for any country jealous of state
prerogatives against religious interference. In
this case the "communist stigma" further
complicates the matter because Beijing's moves are
second-guessed as "communist reactions", while the
Vatican's moves can be equally second-guessed as
"anti-communist reactions".
With everybody
second-guessing everybody, nobody gets anything
across.
Both critical events, the
canonization issue in 2000 and now the appointment
of Cardinal Zen, occurred just before ties were on
the verge of being normalized between Beijing and
the Vatican. Was it a conspiracy concocted by
people in the Vatican against the normalization of
relations? Was it a trap by the Vatican, which
never wished for normal ties to happen and wanted
only to drag things out with Beijing and make it
lose face? Or was it only the devil that
interfered? Or was it just not God's will?
Whatever the case, not everything is lost.
Beijing knows that enemies can become friends.
Anti-communists Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
were the people who opened the United States up to
China; similarly, Cardinal Zen could help to solve
many issues. He could contribute to reconciliation
with the Catholic Church, and many people in
Beijing wish for it. The doors are not closed. Liu
Bainian attacked Cardinal Zen but praised the
pope, and Zen himself took a very prudent,
conciliatory tone with Beijing in an interview
with the Asian Wall Street Journal on March 17.
Zen is also concerned with the unity of
his Church. He and the Vatican do not want to
break with the official Church loyal to the CCP,
and also do not want to create a schism with the
underground church. Here there are major problems
of orthodoxy. The old generation of underground
priests groomed in the loyalty to Rome and the
pope is dying out, and a new generation has come
about that has been used to living without
masters. But the official Church, though it is in
a gray area with the pope, is used to obedience
both to the Chinese state and to the pontiff. In a
way the official Church, being on the border of
apostasy, has to be more observant.
In
contrast, the underground church does not obey the
state and for decades has grown used to having
nobody from Rome telling it what to do. In reality
the underground church is largely out of control,
with priests obeying neither Beijing nor Rome.
Beijing cannot be obeyed because it is the
government of the communist enemy, while Rome is
far away, doesn't know exactly what is going on,
and does not have its people in the field so it
can issue orders.
Therefore, there are 7
million to 8 million people and, more important,
there are hundreds of priests who do not obey
anybody - they are out of control. Moreover they
have blackmailing power with the Holy See: if they
decided to leave the Church, the Vatican would be
without people in China, or rather the only
believers would be the ones in the official Church
loyal to the CCP.
But do these underground
Catholics have an interest in reconciliation
between the Vatican and Beijing? Probably not,
from a practical point of view. For many priests
and bishops, the net result of the normalization
of ties with the Vatican would be that they would
have to obey both the Holy See and Beijing,
whereas now they obey nobody. They would lose all
their freedom in the name of the supreme good, the
reconciliation of the Vatican with Beijing.
People, even priests, might be not that generous.
In fact these priests can argue that there are
plenty of reasonable grounds for not normalizing
ties with Beijing, or for putting a very high
price on it.
In Beijing, too, there is a
constituency against normalizing ties with the
Vatican, for the old reason that religion is a
dangerous element in the state and that the
Catholic Church played a special role in the
demise of communist Poland. Yet this hostility
toward religion is dwindling.
Beijing says
it is not against religion, and in fact will hold
an international congress on Buddhism in Hangzhou
this Thursday. The congress will end with a prayer
for world peace on Saturday, the day before
Catholics celebrate Easter this year. Furthermore,
an olive branch was offered on April 3 to the
Dalai Lama, with Beijing saying he could be
invited to visit China if he renounced the quest
for independence in Tibet. That may have been a
hint to Pope Benedict, who, as Lajolo had said,
would like to visit China.
On the part of
the Vatican, things are more complicated. There is
a whole constituency of people in China who could
well give up on the pope if he comes to terms with
Beijing. In fact if the old generation of priests,
now in their late 70s and 80s, dies, with them
dies a tradition of obedience to the pope.
The new priests, having grown up during
this time of total independence, do not know what
really is obedience to the Holy See and what is
coming to terms with the political authority in
Beijing. Therefore paradoxically the biggest enemy
of normalization of ties with Beijing might be in
the Chinese Church itself. This is not mere
theory; there many stories of fights among bishops
and fierce opposition of some local dioceses to
orders coming from Rome.
It is easy to
believe that the underground Catholics can
sabotage any reconciliation process, as they have
very little to gain from it. And it is hard to
attack them: they are the martyrs, the victims of
communist oppression, so whatever they say has a
special standing. This doesn't necessarily mean
these people are not really martyrs and heroes,
but when the season of martyrs and heroes comes to
an end, they will not be willing to retire. That
is especially if most of the Church consists of
such heroes.
It is clear that the bishops
of the Catholic Church are not simply religious
figures but have an important social role. China
would not allow a foreign state such as the Holy
See to appoint influential social figures who act
within China's administration. It is against the
principle of non-interference in domestic affairs.
But by saying that he was open to consultation on
the issue of bishops' appointment, Ye Xiaowen
recognized the peculiar nature of the Catholic
Church and the issue of discipline from the
religious chiefs in Rome.
It also opened a
door to the issue of religious autonomy. This door
will not be wide open from the beginning - China
likes to move ahead in a slow motion, to avoid
rocking the boat. Yet the door is ajar. Still,
while this opening is significant in principle, it
is tiny in reality, which can justify those who
second-guess, those who oppose the normalization
of ties, to say that the door is not open at all,
it is just a pretense.
It is an uphill
road, with hurdles including second-guessing and
consolidated interests working against
Beijing-Vatican ties, and it will need the mighty
intervention of the Holy Spirit to clear the road.
Francesco Sisci is Asia editor
of the Italian daily La Stampa.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
.)
