Beijing Deal Silences Vatican on Repression for Now

Even the Francis worshippers at La Croix have to admit that this was a betrayal!

From La Croix International

The Vatican's deal with China's totalitarian Communist Party on the appointment of bishops is clearly one of careful calculus, something often ignored by the pope's critics.

The arrangement allows the Chinese regime to nominate new bishops while giving the Vatican an apparent right of veto.

This compromise is seen as effectively removing a stumbling block to the eventual resumption of diplomatic ties.

But we don't yet know how well informed this church calculation is in relation to the regime's long-term objectives, or endgame.

In this regard, some analysts have noted that there is a dearth of Vatican officials who can read and write Chinese, giving rise to doubts about the current depth of their insights into the communist giant.

But we do know this deal is the result of a process that began decades ago, arguably in 1971 when the Vatican withdrew its nuncio, an ecclesiastical diplomat, from Beijing's arch-rival, Taiwan.

The process to reach some sort of accord was taken up by Pope St. John Paul II amid China's so-called 'opening-up' reforms of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

A downside of the current calculus is self-imposed silence by the Vatican, for no one knows how long, over various forms of repression in China, including of Catholics.

President Xi Jinping's ongoing crackdown on dissent, in tandem with the official Sinicization of religious practices and institutions, is well documented.

Silence in the face of abuses does not come easily to Pope Francis who has continued to speak out, in a refreshingly freewheeling, heartfelt way, on a wide range of topics.

Doing so has won him admiration around the globe both within and outside of the church.

Pope Francis had personal experience of authoritarianism during the 1975/83 rule of the Argentine junta in his homeland. And he saved many clerics and Catholic faithful by hiding them away from the generals rather than by speaking out against them.

There have been accusations, led vociferously by Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen, that Chinese so-called 'underground' Catholics loyal to the pope have been sold-out.

This unofficial church group has refused to join the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

The Vatican's remarkably detail free agreement on the appointment of bishops — and it has never pretended to be transparent or democratic — claims, very boldly, to be pastoral and not political.

However, this is a stretch even for the casual observer of not just China but also of the Holy See.

Still, in providing no detail the Vatican appears to have, so far, shrunk the target for criticism to that which is already well worn.

With the Communist Party of China, just about everything has a political dimension.

And this has been clearly apparent in the way it has dealt with religion.

After throwing out Vatican diplomats in 1951, just two years after it won power in the 1949 Civil War with the Nationalists, it formed the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. This attempt to regulate religious practice and ensure compliance with state policies and directives has impeded any resumption of official diplomatic dealings with the Holy See.

The four other official religions — Protestantism, Islam, Daoism and Buddhism — are controlled by similar party-state organizations.

It is also true that Pope Francis has emphasized his view that bishops should be like pastors and that he wants to be a pope for everyone through ecumenicalism, something that disturbs his conservative critics.

Pope Francis has been far more overtly political than his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Indeed, his globalist and often overtly political style is closer to the earlier years of John Paul II's pontificate when he was at the forefront of fighting communism.

Pope Francis has been a fearless advocate for the world's refugees and so many of them in recent years have been Muslims seeking sanctuary in Europe, particularly from war-torn Syria and Sudan.

In Asia, he led the way in expressing concern over persecution of Rohingyas before the crisis became fully blown, with 700-800,000 members of the Muslim ethnic minority flooding into Bangladesh from Myanmar.

His advocacy, including an impeccably measured two-step on the issue last year when he visited both nations, has raised global awareness of the Rohingyas' plight.

It's more the pity then that the Vatican is unable to give voice to another great human tragedy in Asia, the internment in 're-education' camps of up to one million Muslim Uyghurs in China.

Problematically, it comes at a time when few other countries, including Muslim nations, are prepared to criticize China for its appalling treatment of the Uyghurs for fear of economic reprisals. For Beijing, then, the Vatican has helped to make this the perfect storm of silence.

Still this deal, as the Vatican keeps insisting, is just the first move in a longer game plan to interact with Beijing leaders who have their own agenda. The follow up explanation by Pope Francis four days later shed little further light on the actual details but said, in essence "trust me."

It is apposite, indeed, that Martin Scorsese's film about 17th century Jesuit missionaries in Japan was entitled Silence.

Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, speaks a great deal about Father Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit who established a beachhead for the Catholic Church in China during the late 16th and early 17th centuries and was influential at the court of the Wanli Emperor.

Yet while some have expressed excitement that the Chinese government has allowed a foreign power to have any say in its internal affairs, it appears to be only nominal and regularizing what is already being practiced.

Meanwhile, it is yet to be seen whether the Vatican, and Pope Francis, will in future press China's Communist Party rulers to end religious and political repression.

The outcome will allow others to judge whether the calculus behind the church's deal making over the appointment of bishops, in turn aimed at thawing frozen diplomatic ties, is justifiable pragmatism or naive folly.