Beijing He quietly indicated that he will soon void his 2018 “groundbreaking” agreement with the Vatican, which was intended to resolve a decades-long dispute over the appointment of bishops in China.
In November, shortly after the diplomatic exchange verbal notes With Rome to renew the agreement for another two years, China completely denied it in a dry public posting by state bureaucracy. Order No. 15, on new administrative rules for religious affairs, includes an article on establishing a process for the selection of Catholic bishops in China after May 1. The document does not provide for any papal role in the process, not even a papal right. approve or veto episcopal nominations in China, which should be the only substantive concession to the Vatican in the agreement. It’s as if the deal never happened.
Denying an agreement with Pope Francis may not be as important as overturning the “one country, two systems” agreement that should guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy after the UK’s return to China, but reveals the danger of partnerships with Beijing.
In October, when the two-year renewal of the agreement was announced, the Vatican reported that the “results achieved” so far under the agreement were the appointments of two new bishops who had papal approval. The press release praised the nominations as “a good start”. “Thanks to the implementation of the Agreement, there will be no illegitimate ordinances,” said the statement, before expressing the joy that the Chinese Church would experience “unity” once again. Order No. 15 now casts serious doubts on these allegations.
So far, the Vatican has not commented on China’s impressive betrayal. On February 11, the magazine Bitter Winter translated the document into English, allowing the Catholic News Agency to summarize the process they established: “The state Catholic Church and the Episcopal Conference of China will select, approve and ordain episcopal candidates – with no mention of the Vatican’s involvement in the process. “
Significantly, the new rules require the clergy to “adhere to the principle of independent and self-administered religion in China”. This language accompanies a long-standing clause in the commitment to adhere to the so-called Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church (CCPC), which bishops and priests must sign to be licensed to the ministry. This means, in practical terms, that the Chinese clergy must be really independent from the Vatican and therefore must be apostate. In 2019, the Vatican suggested guidelines, outside the framework of the agreement, to reject the clause. Father Huang Jintong, a priest from Fujian, was detained by the police and tortured for four days for following Vatican guidelines.
The new rules stipulate that the PCCC-aligned clergy actively supports the ruling Communist Party. Article 3 requires them to “support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” and “the socialist system”, as well as “practice the fundamental values of socialism”. The rules also require the clergy to promote “social harmony”, by which Beijing means conformity of thought. In other words, the rules aim to make the churches one more arm of the Chinese authoritarian regime.
Enforcement is guaranteed by a rule that states that those who enter churches “are to be regulated through strict surveillance, identity verification and registration”. The record must be tracked in a new government database that lists the names of the legal clergy and regulates their behavior through a system of “rewards” and “punishments”.
Catholicism has deep historical roots in China. Introduced to the country by the 16th-century Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, it is one of the five religions recognized by the state, and China’s estimated 12 million Catholics are not subject to charges of separatism or terrorism, like several other Chinese religious minorities. Instead, the CCP views Catholicism cautiously, as a belief system imported from the West, and aims to co-opt religion through the Party-controlled Patriotic Church or to eradicate it completely.
The appointment of bishops, the Vatican explained in its statement on the renewal of the 2018 agreement, is “essential to guarantee the common life of the Church in China”. Although both parties agreed to keep the text confidential, the Vatican was clear about the importance of a papal role in this process.
As the Catholic News Service reported, “Pope Francis told reporters in September 2018 that the agreement provides for ‘a dialogue about potential candidates. The matter is done through dialogue. But the appointment is made by Rome; the appointment is by the pope. That is clear. ‘”The Vatican revealed that the fundamental teaching of the Church on“ the particular role of the Supreme Pontiff in the Episcopal College and in the very appointment of bishops, inspired the negotiations ”and“ was a point of reference in drafting the text of the agreement. ”This helps to ensure that all Catholic congregations in China are unified in support of the pope.
With Pope Francis’ approval, Vatican diplomats sought a bilateral agreement, taking advantage of the Holy See’s status as a sovereign state. The Vatican accepted that the agreement would be “exclusively on” episcopal nominations. She would refrain from putting pressure on Beijing over the status of the “clandestine”, non-CCPC Catholic Church, the ban on religion for young people, the state’s destruction of countless Marian churches and shrines, its efforts to reinterpret the Bible and a host of others human rights crises. It could live with communist administrative control of its churches, as it did in the Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War. And, as a precondition for the agreement, Pope Francis was willing to suspend the previous excommunications of seven government-appointed bishops. The agreement was signed in September 2018, on a provisional basis for two years. Recently, in October 2020, the Vatican expressed satisfaction with its progress and optimistically characterized it as “above all, the starting point for broader and clearer agreements”.
China was willing to enter into the agreement for a simple reason: it wanted the Vatican’s help to eliminate the clandestine Catholic Church and had the power to guarantee that concession. The Patriotic Church controlled by the CCP would be the institution where Chinese Catholic unification would take place, with the Pope’s blessing. After the deal, Chinese authorities surrounded the clandestine Catholic clergy, warning that they would challenge the pope if they continued to baptize, ordain new clergy and pray in unregistered churches. The Chinese Catholic underground movement could resist being officially labeled illegal or counter-revolutionary; survived fierce persecution as an enemy of the state during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. But he did not resist a conflict with the pope. Conscientious objectors among clandestine clergy felt compelled to close their active ministries and return to their families, as Bishop Vincent Guo of Mindong did last year.
Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong warned that the 2018 agreement would “kill” the underground Catholic movement in mainland China, and his warning now appears to have been confirmed. The underworld has been weakened enough that Beijing, calculating that the deal has served its purpose, is moving to repudiate its only bottom point. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, stripped of a papal role in episcopal nominations in China and with diminished and demoralized clandestinity, is much more ill-positioned to survive intact the Xi era.
The Xi China partnership is a fraudulent game because the CCP does not play by fair rules. It honors bilateral agreements to the extent that they serve their purposes; she has no qualms about breaking the end of an agreement after the other party has fulfilled theirs. Unfortunately, there is little appetite among other nations to hold the Xi regime responsible for such illegality. But as a Catholic and a world leader, President Biden should take a close interest in what is happening to the Church in China, and should use his power to penalize the CCP for its treachery and keep it in focus before committing the United States to any future partnerships with Beijing.