The Vatican and Beijing reached an agreement that will elevate the Chinese government above the Church, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The question of who has the authority to ordain bishops has been at the heart of a decades-old dispute between China and the Vatican.
The new agreement will give China the power to select bishops with only limited input from the Vatican. Furthermore, the Vatican will stop ordaining bishops for underground churches without the authorization of the Chinese government. While the pope will be acknowledged as the head of the Catholic Church in China, the Chinese government will have the last word on all appointments. The state will be able to pick individuals loyal to Beijing.
The new deal is likely to help repair ties between the Vatican and the Chinese government, but the full restoration of diplomatic relations is still a long way off.
The Chinese government and the Vatican have been estranged since the Communist Party of China (CPC) expelled Vatican envoy Antonio Riberi from the country in 1951, banned missionaries, and began oppressing organized religion. Pope Francis has been actively pursuing rapprochement with China.
China insists on appointing its own bishops, claiming that oversight by the Holy See, the judicial body within the Catholic Church, constitutes unnecessary foreign intervention in Chinese affairs. China also opposes attempts by the Vatican to appoint bishops for underground churches without state authorization.
In China, all Catholic organizations must register with the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. The Vatican expressed frustration over the Chinese government’s 2010 appointment of a bishop without Pope Benedict XVI’s approval. The Vatican called the move, one of a number of such occurrences, a “painful wound” to the Church.
The new agreement could thaw relations between Beijing and the Vatican, giving the world’s largest religious organization access to the world’s most populous country. For China, normal interactions with the Vatican could improve its international image, potentially reducing criticisms of China’s human rights record.
Negotiations for the new agreement reportedly began in April. Having reached an accord, negotiators are waiting for papal approval and a formal decision from the Chinese government. Once the agreement passes, it will mark an unprecedented shift in the Vatican’s interactions with foreign governments. The Vatican would officially accept the appointment of eight bishops, three of which were previously excommunicated.
Some observers expect members of underground churches in China to protest the accord.
“If the Vatican should be perceived as abandoning them, it could be seen as a betrayal” and “cause serious divisions in the Chinese Catholic Church,” Richard Madsen, a professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego, told the WSJ. “The government would probably actually like this. Its action over the years show that it would like to see the church weakened, and a deeper division in the church would help accomplish that,” he added, highlighting his suspicions of Beijing’s intentions.
China has a documented propensity for dominating and oppressing religion in order to better preserve state power. Christians played an important role in the shift from a dictatorship to a democracy in South Korea, and now there are an estimated 100 million Christians in China.
Having failed to eradicate religion, the Chinese government, which is officially atheist, set up state-run churches with pastors loyal to China. These churches advocate morality, not scripture, and that the state is superior to religion.
“We have to remember first of all we are a citizen of this country. We are a citizen of the Kingdom of God, but that comes second,” Pastor Wu Weiqing of the state-owned Haidian Church in Beijing told BBC. He further stated that if Jesus were alive today, he would probably be a member of the Communist Party. While the deal between the Vatican and Beijing could give the Catholic Church greater access to Chinese Christians, it could also give the Chinese government greater control over the Church and organized religion.
Pope Francis “would not accept any agreement that would harm the integrity of faith of the universal Church,” the Bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal John Tong argued in July, according to the WSJ.
The future of the Catholic Church in China remains shrouded in uncertainty. The new agreement between Beijing and the Vatican could be a positive step forward or a dangerous surrender of religious power to political organizations like the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the State Administration for Religious Affairs.
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