SINOGRAPH Catholic dynamic shifts in
China By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - Ties between China and the
Vatican are at a crossroads. The ordination on
July 7 of Ma Daqin as the Vatican's bishop of
Shanghai and his public announcement that he would
renounce his membership in the official Catholic
Patriotic Association have the potential to create
a huge change in ties between Beijing and Rome.
The first reaction in Rome to this
announcement was of surprise, meaning that the
Holy See didn't command the bishop to give up his
membership and didn't encourage him to do so.
Evidence of this is the fact that many bishops in
China are members of the Catholic Patriotic
Association, and Rome has not demanded they give
up their memberships.
However, the
Patriotic Association is controversial for
Catholics. It
is a legacy of the Cold
War and in theory sometimes puts laymen in charge
of religious affairs. For this reason, some people
in Rome rejoiced at the announcement, claiming
that Bishop Ma was a brave man. He is now
reportedly being held by the authorities at a
local seminary.
Things are very different
from Beijing's point of view. Ma's appointment
came after months of bitter negotiations between
the two sides - and to the satisfactions of both,
they actually reached a compromise. Beijing then
felt betrayed because even after an agreement was
reached, Rome - or in this case, its
representatives in the person of Bishop Ma -
changed his mind and backed off from the
compromise by breaking with the Patriotic
Association. That is, in other words, Beijing now
feels it cannot trust pledges from the Catholics,
even after an agreement has been reached.
For Beijing, the issue of the Patriotic
Association is a very thorny one. It is an issue
of principles and of practice. In principle,
Beijing feels it needs some degree of control or
supervision over religious groups, and of course
especially over Catholics, whose leadership is
abroad, in Rome. Beijing is not alone in fearing
Catholics: many Western protestant countries have
branded Catholics "papists", people loyal to the
pope rather than to the local government. It is
indication of growing trust that the Chinese have
agreed to discuss and find a kind of compromise on
the appointment of some bishops, instead of a
unilateral appointment of bishops by Beijing.
Furthermore, the Patriotic Association is
a huge structure employing many thousands of
families and with real estate holdings worth
possibly billions. It is not just an organization
concerning Catholics, but it also interests
Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists and Taoists. It is
a huge bureaucratic body with its own internal
logic and assets worth a fortune. It is then also
a problem of the livelihood and welfare of
millions of people in China.
The two
issues, the principle and the practice, of course
go hand in hand, and Beijing is very clear about
it. In fact, also sought the advice of Rome to
change the system.
For Rome, the issue of
the Patriotic Association is different. In
principle, it believes the church may respond to
requests from the state but not from an
organization that manages also the internal life
of the church and which has a religious bearing,
and in practice it is an issue of internal strife
within the Catholic Church.
Many officials
in the Patriotic Association are Catholics who in
the 1950s or later decided to back the government
and go against Rome's request that they go
underground. So even now, the old hatred burns
under the ashes. For this reason, Rome never
responded to the request from Beijing for
suggestions about reforming the Patriotic
Association, deeming it too thorny to even try to
reform it, according to people in Rome.
Many Catholics think that the Patriotic
Association should be completely disbanded. The
fact that in communist Vietnam there is no
organization like a patriotic association for the
Catholics was, according to Rome, a major
advantage in the de facto normalization of ties
and reaching an agreement on the appointment of
bishops.
Disbanding the association is not
an option for Beijing because of two practical
reasons: how to control and keep an eye on the
activities of the Catholics without the Patriotic
Association, and what to do with the assets and
the huge bureaucracy that go with it? To these
questions, Rome so far has not given a
constructive answer.
These are Beijing's
concerns but not Rome's. Rome is conversely
worried about religious issues and legitimacy in
the appointment of bishops. That is, the Pope has
to approve the choice of bishops in China, and
their ordination has to be carried out according
to religious principles. This means that if China
appoints a bishop without the approval of the
pope, this bishop is not legitimate and all
bishops taking part in his ordination are also
"tainted" by this act. This becomes a growing
strain because even legitimate bishops taking part
in the ordination of an illegitimate bishop are
put under a dark cloud.
Beijing doesn't
really understand the mechanics and reasons for
this and is insensitive to it. To Beijing, the
issue is the need for bishops the government can
trust in order to know what happens in the
Catholic body, and these concerns should be in
some way accommodated by Rome. But this is totally
at cross-purposes with Rome, which simply believes
that these are not its concerns - and its concerns
are limited to those of religion.
The
cross-purposes of the two sides weigh hugely on
the daily life of the Catholic Church in China.
Bishops, priests, and common Catholic followers
believe strongly that unity before the pope is one
of the intrinsic features of their faith.
Therefore, any split in this unity is a trial of
their faith and of their identity as Catholics or
as Chinese. Common Chinese followers are vague
about the requirements of the Chinese government,
although most of them are not anti-government. In
fact, throughout Chinese communist history,
Catholics have been one of the meekest religious
faiths in China, ready to obey the government
whenever ordered to provided it does not against
their religious principles.
This is the
backdrop of the ordination in Shanghai. Part of
the compromise reached between the two sides was
that in the ceremony, an illegitimate bishop from
Fujian would attend, but because of his
attendance, about 60 priests (out of around 80 in
the Shanghai diocese) didn't join the ceremony.
Bishop Ma, out of concern for religious unity and
for his priests, agreed to have his ordination
without the controversial Fujian bishop. That is,
although the controversial figure attended the
ceremony, he did not take part in the ordination
itself or put his hands on Ma's head. Evidently,
Ma thought this was not enough to address the
concerns of his Church and what he thought were
the worries about him in Rome. Therefore, he
announced his resignation from the Patriotic
Association.
However, this resignation
creates a very new element in the Catholic dynamic
in China. If Ma resigned, are all bishops loyal to
Rome supposed to resign as well? Conversely, if Ma
hadn't resigned, would that have signaled official
Vatican approval of the Patriotic Association,
something the Vatican has always been very vague
about? The Holy See doesn't like the Patriotic
Association but has long ceased confronting it
directly.
In other words, Ma's resignation
removed a very useful gray area where the two
entities, Beijing and Rome, could find room for
conciliation. Ma's move forces Catholics on the
ground to somehow take sides: are they for Beijing
or Rome? It is the same hard choice that Catholics
had to confront until the 1980s and a choice that
the papal letter of 2007 dispelled by claiming
that a good Chinese Catholic should also be a good
Chinese citizen.
Here is the crossroads:
either Rome and the Vatican find a suitable
solution to this dilemma, and this will
dramatically improve ties between the two sides;
or they will fail to do so, and Beijing and the
Vatican could be torn apart, asking - demanding -
Chinese Catholics to again make a choice.
In this situation, certainly, Beijing is,
as usual, insensitive about the deep religious
concerns of the Church. However, Rome completely
failed to understand the political relevance for
Beijing of the announcement of the resignation. Of
course, the simplest solution of all could be a
public announcement that there was a
misunderstanding, that Bishop Ma never really
wanted to give up his membership in the Catholic
Patriotic Association, and in fact only meant to
announce his concern about his new role. This
could be a first step to diffuse the tension.
After that, the two sides need to take
very concrete measures to address the broad
significance of their bilateral ties, which are
not simply religious or political, but cultural.
The Vatican embodies the continuity of
Western civilization for 2,000 years, and it could
work as an important bridge, bringing the West and
the East one step closer, as the Jesuit
missionaries did in China in the 17th century.
Short of that, all tensions, even non-religious
ones, around China could grow more bitter. The
question then is: what direction do Beijing and
Rome want to take?
Francesco
Sisci is a columnist for the Italian daily Il
Sole 24 Ore and can be reached at
fsisci@gmail.com
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