Massimo Introvigne
(ZENIT News – Bitter Winter / Roma, 10.30.2024).- The Vatican-China Deal of 2018 just went through its third renewal this time not for two but for another four years. The Holy See has mentioned in English “the consensus reached for an effective application” of the agreement but in the original Italian the world translated as “effective” is “proficua” (fruitful), a stronger qualification of what is happening. The sentence is also somewhat garbled in Italian, as if somebody had translated it from a foreign language—Chinese, perhaps?
Immediately, two reactions greeted the renewal. Chinese and other Catholic (and non-Catholic) critics of the deal, including the circle around retired Bishop of Hong Kong, 92-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, have seen in the renewal and the press release a final sign of a “betrayal” and of a Vatican “sellout” to the Xi Jinping regime. Those who supported the agreement (or worked to have it signed) from the beginning now present the 4-year renewal as nothing short than a triumph and ask those who were doubtful in 2018 to acknowledge that they were wrong and apologize. They also suspect that the opposition to the agreement comes from sinister geopolitical maneuvers from the United States, Taiwan, and Japan.
Readers of “Bitter Winter” know that we disagree with both positions. While we love and respect the extraordinary life and testimony of Cardinal Zen, we do not believe that categories like “betrayal” and “sellout” are adequate interpretive tools for an extremely complicated situation. Certainly, Pope Francis is not a supporter of Xi Jinping’s thought on religion that aims at reducing all religions to mere mouthpieces of a political regime. After all, this is the same Pope Francis who just signed the letter encyclical “Dilexit nos,” which teaches the opposite. It proposes the “Kingdom of the heart of Christ” (no. 182) as a model society where politics favors the flourishing of spirituality as the heart of society rather than the other way around. Not to mention, considering China’s policies of forced abortion, that the Pope continues to compare abortions to killings by organized crime, that we agree with him or not and at the cost of getting in trouble with some Western countries.
It is also important to remember that, while other Western diplomacies represent governments that are accountable to voters, this is not the case for the Vatican. The Pope is elected by a handful of cardinals, not by the members of the church. This means inter alia that Vatican diplomats, as it always happened in history, can afford to think in terms of decades or even centuries, not the few years separating a country from its next elections. I am sure some of them sincerely believe that in the very long run the agreement will indeed be “fruitful.” And claiming that predictions or hopes about what will happen in decades or centuries are wrong is futile. We just don’t know.
Finally, “not” renewing the agreement would have caused problems for the former underground Catholics who did welcome the deal and “reemerged” in 2018. They cannot now go back to clandestinity without serious personal risks.
On the other hand, we also disagree with those celebrating the agreement as an unqualified success. Yes, we are aware of the fact that Chinese bishops have been allowed to participate in events in the Vatican, including the recent Synod, and Vatican representatives to visit China. We do not exclude possible good effects of these trips. However, the negative effects should also be considered, in terms of legitimizing a regime that even the timid United Nations have declared guilty of “crimes against humanity” and several Parliaments of democratic countries have censored for its “genocide” of the Uyghurs.
The price to pay for the trips are the Vatican’s minimal and almost inaudible references to the genocide in Xinjiang, the destruction of Tibetan culture, the demise of democracy in Hong Kong, and the persecution of all non-authorized religions in China. John Paul II and Benedict XVI told ultra-conservative Catholics such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who would have been happy with religious liberty for Catholics only, that they were wrong. Religious liberty, they said, is indivisible, as it is a fundamental human right, not a privilege of one church only. We wonder whether these teachings also apply to China.
But there is no real religious liberty in China for Catholics either. Yes, churches affiliated with the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association are open, but they were open also before the agreement was signed in 2018. Except that minors cannot participate to their activities, they function normally. I went to the Potemkin tours of these churches myself several times before 2018. But here again there is a price to pay. “Bitter Winter,” who publishes reports from China that are not based on Potemkin tours, regularly describes priests compelled to sing the glories of the CCP and Xi Jinping and to organize pilgrimages to revolutionary museums and monuments rather than to Marian shrines. As for the “conscientious objectors” who refuse the Vatican China Deal of 2018 and continue to refuse to join the Patriotic Association, there is no trace of the “respect” requested by the Vatican Guidelines of 2019. When found, they more often go to jail.
That not everything works well about the appointment of Catholic bishops either, which is after all the subject matter of the agreement, was demonstrated by the saga of the new bishop of Shanghai, not the less important diocese in China. The Holy See declared officially it had learned that Bishop Shen Bin had been transferred there “from the media.” For the sake of the agreement, Bishop Shen Bin was then legitimized “ex post” by the Pope and even invited at a Vatican conference in Rome. But no, it was not a minor incident.
I believe that the most telltale sign that, so far, the agreement is not a “success” is a regular perusal of the official website of the government- (and Vatican-) recognized Chinese Catholic Church, “The Catholic Church in China.” Unlike in any other official Catholic website in the world, there are no news about the Pope’s teachings, activities, or documents. But there are a lot of news about “Sinicization,” “red” pilgrimages, and the duty for Catholics to study the documents of the CCP and Xi Jinping.
Asking for apologies from those who raised doubts about the agreement looks a little bit premature.
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