China Betrays Its Deal With the Vatican

As Fred Schwartz said, 'You can trust the communist (to be communists). The CCP must be destroyed #SmashTheCCP #BoycottChineseGoods #Boycott2022WinterOlympics.

From National Review

By Nina Shea

Having secured the papacy’s help in weakening the Chinese Catholic underground, Xi Jinping’s regime is reneging on the commitments it made in return.

Beijing has quietly indicated that it will soon abrogate its “breakthrough” 2018 agreement with the Vatican, which was meant to settle a decades-long dispute over the appointment of bishops in China.

In November, shortly after exchanging diplomatic notes verbales with Rome to renew the deal for another two years, China thoroughly negated it in a dry public posting by the 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 makes no provision for any papal role in the process, not even a papal right to approve or veto episcopal appointments in China, which was supposed to be the single substantive concession to the Vatican in the agreement. It’s as if the deal never happened.

Reneging on a deal with Pope Francis may not be as consequential as overturning the “one country, two systems” agreement that was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy after the city’s return from the United Kingdom to China, but it does reveal the peril of international partnerships with Beijing.

In October, when the two-year renewal of the deal was announced, the Vatican reported that the “results achieved” until then under the agreement were the appointments of two new bishops who had papal approval. Its press statement praised the appointments as “a good start.” “Thanks to the implementation of the Agreement, there will be no illegitimate ordinations,” the statement said, before expressing joy that the Chinese Church would experience “unity” once again. Order No. 15 now casts serious doubt on these claims.

So far, the Vatican has not commented on China’s a stunning betrayal. On February 11, the magazine Bitter Winter translated the document into English, enabling the Catholic News Agency to summarize the process they establish: “China’s state-run Catholic Church and bishops’ conference 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 tracks with a longstanding clause in the membership pledge of the so-called Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church (CPCC), which bishops and priests are required to sign to be licensed for ministry. It means, in practical terms, that Chinese clergy must be actually independent of the Vatican and, therefore, must be apostates. In 2019, the Vatican suggested guidelines, outside the agreement’s framework, for rejecting the clause. Father Huang Jintong, a priest in Fujian, was held by police and tortured for four days for following the Vatican guidance.

The new rules stipulates that CPCC-aligned clergy actively support the ruling Communist Party. Article 3 requires them to “support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” and “the socialist system,” as well as to “practice the core values of socialism.” The rules also require clergy to promote “social harmony,” by which Beijing means conformity of thought. In other words, the rules aim to turn churches into another arm of the authoritarian Chinese regime.