Maestro Aurelio Porfiri (born 1968 in Rome), Italian composer, choral conductor, organist, educator, author and publisher,
has published over 30 books and 600 articles, recorded over 10 CD albums, and has over 100 musical compositions in print.
Read more about him on
aurelioporfiri.com/biography-works/about-me/
His Chorabooks recently published, among others, Aldo Maria Valli’s Uno sguardo nella notte: Ripensando Benedetto XVI
With a Foreword by Mario Tosatti. Since April this year, he has become a regular contributor to Tosatti’s blogsite, STILUM CURIAE, with ‘Dispacci dalla Cina’, reports on the Church in China from his sojourns in HongKong and Macau where he has regular commitments as musician and music professor. China and other important issues regarding Bergoglio's administration of the Church and non-shepherding (or deliberate misdirection) of his flock have been pushed to the backburner in the light of the McCarrick-Philadelphia report-Vigano expose concatenation. The following is Porifir's 17th China dispatch to Tosatti.
How McCarrick sought to obstruct
Cardinal Zen’s meeting with President Bush
Translated from
Sept. 3, 2018
Maestro Aurelio Porfiri is in HongKong again and has sent us a new dispatch that is laden with news as usual. His first report is particularly interesting because it is most relevant to current events in the Church. It is about the role that then Cardinal McCarrick played on the China-Vatican issue, in particular, his sympathies with the Patriotic Association
[which is, in effect, China’s ‘national Catholic church’].
Let us not forget that – as Mons. Vigano says in his Testimony – the pope's first gesture of rehabilitating the predator prelate after Benedict XVI’s private sanctions was to send him on a mission to China
[presumably to advance the Bergoglio agenda of establishing at whatever cost a détente with Beijing that would enable Bergoglio to be the first pope ever to visit China]. Here is Porfiri’s dispatch:
Mark Simon is an American Catholic who lives in Hongkong and is very critical of how Beijing has been governing this former British crown colony. He is a managing editor with a local media outlet, and from what he writes, he appears to be very well-informed about what takes place here and abroad. One of his recent tweets sparked my curiosity.
On August 28, he tweeted:
“2006, visit with Cardinal Zen as courtesy call - McCarrick lobbied furiously for us not to see President Bush. Later in day when Zen saw Negroponte at State Dept. We were informed by State that McCarrick thought Zen overstating case”. On other occasions, Simon had pointed out McCarrick’s close relations with the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. In short, a thread runs through all this.
McCarrick has been one of the negotiators for Bergoglio who has most often been to China. Even in 2005, in an interview with Gianni Cardinale, he was already advocating the line that the current pope has taken about China, namely an ‘unfavorable agreement’ with Beijing as the ‘best way’ to resolve the conflict with China about the Vatican’s authority over the Catholic Church in China. Of course, the current crisis, in which McCarrick is among the prime protagonists, has seemed to push aside the China problem and other problems facing the Church.
About this, I have heard from an authoritative source that there may be an announcement on the China-Vatican situation this month (September). My source has access to inside happenings at levels much higher than those to which I have personal access. Perhaps, the announement may be postponed in view of the storm now raging in the Church on account of scandals and various revelations. We shall see.
Five-year Sinicization plan
Meanwhile, Beijing’s five-year plan to sinicize the Catholic Church in China – about which Fr Bernardo Cervellera has written in AsiaNews, and on which I commented for AsiaNews on how this would affect music and liturgy – simply confirms what many have been observing:
that the Chinese government is seeking anxiously to control the various religious organizations in China to guarantee a stability that it sees threatened by any freedom of action given to those who profess a religious faith.
It always seems to come back to a juxtaposition between them and us, between China and the West, a juxtaposition with historical reasons that have been well studied in a book by Perry Johansson of the University of Hongkong. Which is basically what was reaffirmed by Wang Zuo-an, director of Beijing’s Office for Religious Affairs, on the Communist Party newspaper
Qiushi and reported by HongKong’s
Sunday Examiner:
that foreign powers must stay away from religions in China.
On why China is not Christian
I asked Fr Jean-Pierre Charbonnier, a noted sinologist with the foreign missions, why China never became a Christian nation. He explained it this way:
“Chinese civilization is very refined. It has a strong basis in moral virtue and a drive for self-perfection. But it lacks a sense of human limitations and condemns forgiveness as a shameful weakness. Offenses must always be avenged. The Chinese do not want to lose face by confessing their mistakes. They do not have a sense of sin. On the other hand, Christian faith would demolish such arrogance. And if Christianity has been slow to progress in China, this is due in large part to the non-Christian actions of Westerners in China”.
Of course, one cannot deny that throughout history, Westerners in China have not always been exemplary in showing Christian witness. But I would also underscore the centrality of the cultural factors cited by Fr Charbonnier.
Other information
The five major religious organizations in China have reportedly proposed to fly the Chinese flag over all their places of worship and to promote ceremonies honoring that flag during major religious festivities, according to the
China Christian Daily on August 7.
In Catholic Independent News on August 27, there is an article reporting on the ‘intensification’ of relations between China and the Vatican under the reigning pope, with the broadcasting of documentaries about the ‘Catholic Church in China’
[Presumably, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. One wonders whether the underground church gets any mention at all.]
In the context of an unprecedented tightening the screws on advocates for human rights, the University of Beijing has expelled two HongKong lawyers, provoking a strong protest from the Bar Association of HongKong.
In other news, although we are always told that the Chinese economy is in continuous growth, a recent article in AsiaNews questions this: “The Chinese statistics office says that corporations are analyzed by sampling. But sources say the sampling cherrypicks the firms that are most ‘virtuous’. In fact, the sampled firms are never made known. The ‘manipulated’ statistics have to do with the country’s largest industries, retail merchandising, electrical consumption, and carbon production. This year, once again, the statistics office is encountering great difficulties to reconcile the data from the various regions and provinces with the overall projection for the Gross National Product”.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/09/2018 13:44]