ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

Cardinals Bertone and Zen:
Opposing views on how to implement
Pope's letter to Chinese Catholics

For the Vatican secretary of state, the clandestine Church must come out into the open
and comply with the Chinese authorities.
Cardinal Zen thinks that would be handing itself over to the enemy.
One Chinese bishop recently 'went over' to the 'official' Church.




ROME, December 3, 2009 – The Catholics of China have received two very different instructions recently from two of the highest authorities of the Church: Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and Cardinal Joseph Zen Zekiun.

As secretary of state, Bertone is responsible for Church geopolitics as a whole. Zen is bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, and a member of the commission set up by the Vatican to follow the implementation of the normative letter written by Benedict XVI to Chinese Catholics in June of 2007.

Cardinals Bertone and Zen are both Salesians, and have known each other for much of their lives. But they are often in disagreement concerning China. The former appears more "realistic," the latter more combative. Each claims to be interpreting the Pope's letter correctly.

In recent weeks, a situation involving a Chinese bishop has again revealed the glaring divergence between the two.

The bishop is Francis An Shuxin, 60, coadjutor of the diocese of Baoding, whose main bishop, James Su Zhimin, 75, has been held in an unknown location since 1996.

Bishop An Shuxin himself spent ten years in prison. He was set free last August 24. But at a high price: that of joining the Patriotic Association, the political instrument used by the Chinese authorities to keep the national Church under supervision and separate it from Rome.

Bishop An Shuxin's decision caused some disarray among the 'underground' clergy and faithful. Baoding is in Hebei, the region of China with the highest concentration of Catholics, at least a million and a half, most of them without official recognition.

In addition to Su Zhmin, two other "clandestine" bishops of Hebei are currently in prison: 85-year-old Cosmas Shi Enxiang, bishop of Yixian, who disappeared after his arrest on April 13, 2001, and 74-year-old Julius Jia Zhiguo, bishop of Zhengding, who was rearrested last March 30.

Together with Bishop An Shuxin, two priests of his diocese were also released from prison, on condition that they join the Patriotic Association.

To some in the underground Church, the action of these three seemed like a betrayal, going over to the side of the enemy. But others believe it is a necessary step in order to emerge from clandestine status, a condition that Benedict XVI described in his 2007 letter as "not a normal feature of the Church's life."

It is widely believed that the Roman curia has been pushing the clandestine bishops and priests to obtain official recognition, for the sake of normalizing the life of the dioceses, even at the price of bowing to some of the diktats of the regime.

In the case of Bishop An Shuxin, the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples is suspected to have counselled him, and on November 3, the congregation issued a statement denying it had ever pressured him.

On November 16, Cardinal Bertone addressed a letter to the priests of the Chinese Church, ostensibly in connection with the Year for Priests.

In the letter, dated November 10, Bertone doesn't mention the case of the bishop of Baoding. But the cardinal urges "reconciliation within the Catholic community and a respectful and constructive dialogue with the civil authorities, without renouncing the principles of the Catholic faith."

Bertone also writes that "a truly Eucharistic community cannot retreat into itself, as though it were self-sufficient, but it must stay in communion with every other Catholic community."

Bertone's letter is interesting for other reasons. In exhorting Chinese priests to virtue, he highlights their vices: frequent infidelity to the promises of poverty and chastity, hotheadedness, laziness in pastoral care, lack of study, disinterest in promoting vocations, the absence of missionary zeal...

The statistics on the Church in China are not encouraging. Over the past ten years, the Catholic population in China has remained unchanged. Vocations to the priesthood are falling, but so are vocations to religious life for women. The priests and bishops are too old, or too young. The generation in the middle is missing, and the younger priests are not suitable candidates to be bishops.

With the Church in such a weak condition, the regime feels encouraged to exercise strong pressure and supervision over it. For two years, the Holy See has been unable to appoint any new bishops in China.

Judging by the 23 pages of an instruction released on November 18 by Cardinal Zen – his latest of many commentaries on the letter from Benedict XVI in 2007 – the responsibility for this disappointing state of affairs lies to a great extent with the Vatican authorities.

In Zen's view, the idea is taking hold that the heroic season of the clandestine Church has ended, and that all of its bishops and priests should join the official Church recognized by the regime.

Zen thinks this would lead to an even worse subservience of the Church to the regime in China, and represents an abusive interpretation of Benedict XVI's letter.

The cardinal's instruction reviews the Pope's letter from start to finish, explaining it in what Zen maintains is the only correct way.

According to Zen, when Benedict XVI writes that "the clandestine condition is not a normal feature of the Church's life," he is not ordering the clandestine communities to give in to the demands of the government, but is telling them to resist as long as the abnormal condition that leads to the clandestine condition continues to exist.

He claims that while the Pope is not forbidding the clandestine communities to ask for and obtain official recognition, neither is he inciting them to do this frivolously. On the contrary, the Pope warns them that the regime "almost always" grants recognition on the condition of doing things that are "incompatible with Catholic doctrine."

Zen firmly believes that joining the Patriotic Association is something a clandestine bishop must never do, not even to obtain his freedom.

To those who point out that the Pope has not asked officially recognized bishops to leave the Patriotic Association, Zen says the compromise is due to historical circumstances. He says the Church is allowing illegitimate bishops appointed by the government who have since returned to communion with Rome to remain 'official' but only provisionally, and with the sincere intention of changing this state of things as soon as possible.

At the Vatican, Cardinal Zen's instruction was considered his latest criticism of the Curia's "diplomatic" stance.

Until a few months ago, Vatican attention to China was mostly directed by Monsignor Pietro Parolin, undersecretary for relations with states, and Monsignor Gianfranco Rota Graziosi, bureau chief of the same section.

Parolin has the most expertise in this area, and also followed the situation of the Church in Vietnam. But last summer he was sent to Venezuela as apostolic nuncio, and no one has replaced him in the Curia who has equal competence on the China dossier.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, about a hundred Catholic representatives appointed by the government, including 40 bishops, postponed a scheduled Nov. 25-26 National Assembly of Catholic Representatives for an undetermined date.

The Assembly is the highest authority governing the Catholic Church in China, formally above the Patriotic Association and the PA's episcopal conference, the Council of Chinese Bishops. None of these three institutions is compatible with the configuration of the Catholic Church.

The powers of the Assembly include that of appointing the presidents of the Patriotic Association and of the Council of Bishops. Both of these posts have been vacant for years, because they were both occupied by the "patriotic" bishop of Beijing, Michael Fu Tieshan, who died in 2007, and of Nanjing, Joseph Liu Yuanren, who died in 2004.

In recent months, Cardinal Zen did everything he could to convince the official bishops and priests to boycott the meetings. He didn't succeed. But the Chinese authorities stopped forcing the issue. And by postponing the National Assembly of Catholic Representatives, they have left open the opportunity – or temptation – for yet another compromise with Vatican authorities.


It's all very confusing. It's difficult to say how prompt and how efficiently the pastoral letters and instructions are disseminated among the underground Catholics. Who knows how many of them are even aware at present of the Bertone letter and the Zen instructions?

In any case, it seems to me the cause of the Church in mainland China is crippled above all by the lack of at least one strong leader or rallying point within China for the underground Chinese.

Cardinal Zen favors the heroic stand but he is not inside China, and we really don't know what influence he has, if any, on the underground Church there. He does have the advantage of proximity and language over the Secretariat of State, whose translators apparently botched the first version of the Pope's letter!

And the Vatican Secretariat of State appears not to have developed an effective way of communicating with the underground Church other than established ways like the Internet (and snail mail) that the Chinese authorities can easily block.

Also, what is it really that Mons. Parolin had to contribute to improving the situation, if in the two years since the Pope's letter, he obviously failed to coordinate with Cardinal Zen in any way?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for now. I personally think the underground bishops should decide what to do individually, based on a realistic asessment of their respective local situations, and what would be best for their underground flock. Some will choose to continue resisting, some will decide that going over to the official Church will bring more good than bad to their flock.

Meanwhile, they can look at the experience of those who are now in the official Church. If they are able to practice their faith freely and in the open, does it really matter that they have to pay lip service to the PA?

And since apparently all the official bishops in China have by now also been recognized by the Vatican, they may be justified in interpreting the Pope's letter to mean that as official bishops, they should be good citizens as well. Which means, in their case, following PA orders.

The PA appears to have just one raison d'etre: to create the appearance of a Chinese Catholic Church that is independent of Rome. It does not seem to have anything to do with the arrest, imprisonment, and sometimes, disappearance and death, of some bishops and priests, which, from all accounts, are carried out by local/regional officials arbitrarily. Equally important, the PA does not appear to deviate from the doctrine of the Church, except for the practical matter of appointing bishops.

In this context, I find the Curial interpretation of the Pope's letter reasonable.

After some accommodation was reached on the naming of bishops - with the Vatican approving the last few bishops named by the PA - Benedict XVI perhaps thinks such a provisional truce is acceptable (and preserves the apostolic succession), until the Vatican is able to work out a more satisfactory agreement with the Beijing central government on the appointment of bishops. This appointing power appears to be the only outward sign of whether the bishops of China are under the jurisdiction of Rome or of Beijing.

Meanwhile, Cardinals Bertone and Zen should come to a mutual accommodation themselves because the lack of coherence - and even downright opposition - of their respective stands only confuses the Chinese Catholics more!

Worse, some would say the Pope's letter was not at al clear, even after the Vatican published a compendium of it, which was supposed to help understanding. So, it's not very reassuring when the two cardinals most involved in the issue have radically different interpretations of what the Pope meant.

Perhaps they should ask the Pope directly which one is right. I suspect the Pope will say it is not a black-and-white situation at all and should not be dealt with inflexibly.