CARDINAL ZEN: OUR "THOMAS MORE" TODAY! # 2 OF 3

CARDINAL ZEN: OUR "THOMAS MORE" TODAY! # 2 OF 3

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW/CINOPSBEGONE.BLOGSPOT.COM - TUES. JULY 23/19

 

"The Erosion of Church Authority, The Vatican's Ominous Negotiations with Communist China" Mindszenty Report, March 20, 2018, Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation Vol. LX- No. 3

 

Preface:

    The following are excerpts to help one understand, the political and religious influences in the Vatican to negotiate an agreement with Communists which they did:

"Dr. Chen suggests that Pope Francis's background as a Jesuit priest might also be playing a role. Jesuits arrived in China 400 years ago and established a presence on the mainland by conforming to local norms. Pope Francis's own background in Argentina, where he adjusted to a military junta notorious for its human rights violations, might be playing a role as well. Pope Francis perhaps believes that short-term accommodation with dictatorships can pay long-term dividends for the church.

 

There should be no doubt that Pope Francis sees his mission in Beijing and the world as historic. Long-time Vatican watcher George Weigel observes in National Review that there is little reason to trust the Chinese government on any accord. He asses the situation as grim. If China becomes more repressive, then "what reason is there to have any confidence that the Chinese-Communist regime would not tighten the screws on Catholics who challenge the state on human-rights grounds?" ...

If, on the other hand, conditions get better in a liberating China with the rising middle class, Weigel wonders why people would be interested in a Catholicism that "kowtowed" to the Communist regime.

 

Former bishop of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kium has been closely following the year-and-a-half negotiations between Rome and Bejing. He met with Pope Francis on January 12 to personally deliver a letter from an underground bishop who has refused to resign. The letter came from 88-year-old Bishop Zhuang Jianjian, who was ordained with Vatican approval in 2006.

 

In December 2017, Bishop Zhuang was escorted by government officials ... to meet a papal delegation who asked Bishop Zhuang to step aside in favor of Huang Bingzhang, an excommunicated bishop and member of the National People's Congress. Huang had been excommunicated for accepting a government appointment as bishop against Vatican wishes. Shortly afterwards, the Vatican envoys traveled to Fujian Providence to ask another underground bishop to step down to step down to serve as assistant to another government-appointed bishop, Zhan Silu, whose consecration the Vatican had earlier declared illegal.

 

Cardinal Zen reported on his meeting with pope Francis in an open letter on Facebook on January 29, He stated that the pontiff expressed sympathy with the underground church and said he instructed the Vatican negotiators "not to create another Mindszenty case." It is not entirely clear what Pope Francis intended by this remark....(Pope Paul VI, desiring to conciliate the Hungarian communist government, removed  Mindszenty's titles as archbishop a Primate of Hungary in 1973 after Mindszenty refused to resign. A hero to anti-communists all over the world, Mindszenty believed that there should be no compromise with an evil totalitarian regime.

 

CHINESE CATHOLICS IN A 'CAGE'?

Cardinal Zen has become less sanguine about where the negotiations with China are headed. He has declared publicly that allowing the Chinese government to appoint bishops will place the Chinese Catholics in an "iron cage." The Rev. Bernardo Cervellera, the editor of AsiaNews.it, was even more direct in his criticism of where the negotiations seem to be heading. He warned that the Vatican negotiators appeared to be giving "carte blanche, and accept all requests and pose no opposition on questions that affect the church in China."

 

The Vatican's apparent eagerness for a rapprochement with mainland China is evident in public statements by church officials in Rome praising China as a conduit for social justice. Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, described China in a recent interview with the Spanish-language edition of the Vatican Insider  as the country "best implementing the social doctrine of the Church." He asserted that in China " you do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs." (Obviously he has never been to a Bejing or Shanghai nightclub.)... George H. Kubeck