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The
Catholic Church in China
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
From the comfort of the United States, where many people never give a
second thought to freedom of religion, the fact that there are
individuals in our time who are persecuted for being Catholic seems to
belong to another age. Yet, persecution is not a relic of the past. The
recent death of Archbishop Paulos Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic
archbishop of Mosul in Iraq, is a blunt reminder. So is the lack of
religious freedom in China.
Christians have
always been a minority in China. Yet, prior to the communist era that
began in 1949, there was a small but thriving Catholic community of 3.3
million people served by 5,700 priests. When I was a boy, one of my
fascinations was the Maryknoll magazine with the pictures it provided of
American missionaries witnessing to Jesus Christ in faraway China.
However, when the communists took over, foreign-born missionaries were
soon put in harm’s way. The Catholic Church was strongly anti-communist.
That made Catholics suspect, the infamous “subject to a foreign power
(the pope) syndrome,” once common even here in the United States. To
counter this perceived threat to atheistic communism, efforts were made
to transform the Catholic Church into a government-controlled structure
independent of the Vatican. When resisted, imprisonment and expulsion
from the country followed.
In September 1951, the papal nuncio was forced to leave China. Relations
between the Chinese government and the Vatican, already precarious, were
severed. Pope Pius XII issued two Apostolic Letters that discouraged
Chinese Catholics from proclaiming autonomy and independence from the
Holy See. The communist government responded by confronting resisting
Catholics even more boldly. Most Catholic missionaries had departed
China by the end of 1955. Their institutions and properties, such as
universities, hospitals and orphanages, were taken over and nationalized
or confiscated by the government. Meanwhile, something called the
Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association was formed. There were Catholics
who accepted this effort to separate them from the universal Catholic
Church, but not all. Those who refused to accept communist domination
went underground.
Priests and bishops were sent to prison or labor camps. Perhaps the best
known was the bishop of Shanghai, Ignatius Kung, who was imprisoned for
32½ years. He was made a cardinal “in pectore” by Pope John Paul II in
1979. It would not have been safe to publicly announce that Kung was a
“prince of the Church” at that time.
Cardinal Kung is said to have had a special devotion to the Blessed
Mother under her title of Our Lady of Sheshan (Sheshan means “mountain”
in Chinese). At the height of the communist persecution in 1953, he led
the priests of the Shanghai Diocese on pilgrimage to Sheshan. There
Bishop Kung and his clergy made a solemn pledge before Our Lady of
Sheshan that they would not betray their faith or their duty to the
Church and to their faithful. With few exceptions, the priests of the
Shanghai Diocese refused to accept government control of the Catholic
Church, even though that meant long years of imprisonment and labor camp
incarceration. Many were martyred. Cardinal Kung eventually was
released, but not until he was 87 years old. He died in exile in the
United States.
The darkest days came during the so-called Cultural Revolution
(1966-1976). The closure of churches, the destruction of religious
artifacts, the burning of Bibles and Christian books became regular
occurrences. Clergy, women religious and numerous Christian workers were
publicly humiliated, tortured and sent to prisons and labor camps to
join their colleagues who had previously refused to accept the Christian
Patriotic Associations. No public church activities were tolerated.
At the end of the Cultural Revolution, the ban on religious practice was
relaxed. Eventually the right to engage in normal religious activities
was affirmed as long as it was strictly controlled by the government.
Clergy who accepted the Patriotic Catholic Church (as the government
entity was called) were released from prison and allowed to function in
public. Many priests, however, refused to live in a church with priests
who had married, had betrayed others, or had publicly denied the primacy
of the pope. By 1989, the “Underground Church” had more than 50 bishops.
They and the priests of the Underground Church continued to be the
target of pressure from the government.
Today, the Catholic Church in China is divided: the
government-controlled Patriotic Church and the Underground Church
faithful to the Holy Father. In recent years, however, the two sides
have gradually moved away from mistrust and bitter accusations to an
attitude of understanding and respect and to concrete acts of
cooperation and genuine efforts at reconciliation. The dividing lines
between the two are becoming increasingly blurred. Select patriotic
church seminarians and clergy have been allowed to leave China for
further theological training in Catholic seminaries in the United
States. At the same time, the Underground Church continues to be the
target of pressure from the government. According to the Kung
Foundation, as recently as last year the bishop of Yong Nian in Hebei
died in prison and was denied a Catholic funeral. His body was cremated
and his ashes were buried in a public cemetery within six hours of his
mysterious death.
Last year on the feast of Pentecost, Pope Benedict XVI issued a letter
to the bishops, priests, consecrated persons and lay faithful in China.
He wrote: “It must not be forgotten that many bishops have undergone
persecution and have been impeded in the exercise of their ministry, and
some of them have made the Church fruitful with the shedding of their
blood.”
The Holy Father has called for a special day of prayer for China. These
are his words: “Dear pastors and all the faithful, the date 24 May could
in the future become an occasion for the Catholics of the whole world to
be united in prayer with the Church which is in China. This date is
dedicated to the liturgical memorial of Our Lady, Help of Christians,
who is venerated with great devotion at the Marian Shrine of Sheshan in
Shanghai. I would like that date to be kept by you as a day of prayer
for the Church in China. I encourage you to celebrate it by renewing
your communion of faith in Jesus our Lord and of faithfulness to the
pope, and by praying that the unity among you might become ever deeper
and more visible. I remind you, moreover, of the commandment that Jesus
gave us, to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us, as
well as the invitation of the apostle St. Paul: ‘First of all, then, I
urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be
made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we
may lead a quiet and peaceful life, Godly and respectful in every way.
This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who
desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’”
(1 Tim. 2:1-4).
China will be held up as a country that has made outstanding progress
toward modernization in recent years during the upcoming Olympic Games.
Recent Tibetan demonstrations have raised awareness that not all is
copasetic in China when it comes to human rights. The fact there is
religious conflict may not capture the attention of world media, but it
remains a reality.
In the meantime, come May 24, the pope wants us to pray in a special way
for the renewal of genuine religious freedom in China and the
exoneration of all criminal charges against religious prisoners,
including Catholic bishops, priests and faithful, with their release
from jails and labor camps. |
