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September 17, 2007 • VOL. 45, NO. 16 • Oakland, CA
Pope’s
letter on Church in
China: a ‘new moment’ of hope
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At this year’s Easter Mass, April 8, Bishop Peter Feng Xinmao of Hengshui baptizes a man at Jingxian cathedral in China ‘s Hebei province. CNS PHOTO/UCAN |
Pope Benedict XVI’s Pentecost letter to the people
of the Church in China is a remarkable achievement. He does not so much
thread through the hurt and conflict of the last half century as he places
an enlightening perspective on the present day situation. His is a careful
and masterful appraisal and direction for the 8 to 12 million Catholics
in China.
The letter is the result of his own initiative last January to bring together
in Rome a group that included not only his secretary of state along with
the one who has been engaged with diplomatic efforts in China but also
bishops from Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan, notably Cardinals Joseph Zen
of Hong Kong and Paul Shen of Kaoshiung.
The former is a Salesian; the latter is a Jesuit. Both
have visited us here on the West Coast and have offered us generous hospitality
from the other side of the Pacific.
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A Chinese Catholic woman holds a prayer book (above left) while attending the Church of the Savior — known to local Catholics as Beitang or North Church — in Beijing. At right, a priest listens to a woman from behind a simple confessional screen before Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Beijing. CNS PHOTOS: CLARO CORTES IV/REUTERS |
The meeting with Pope Benedict was described as one of “fraternal
and frank cordiality,” diplomatic language to represent differences
of opinion and judgment. The pope’s letter represents his reflection
on that meeting. He has brought us to a new moment.
A 40-year perspective
I think back to 1968. Oakland-based World Airways, under the
direction of Orinda resident Edward Daly, offered a charter flight to
Asia for $345. Six of us priests who were raised here in the Bay Area
took advantage of the flight and enjoyed almost one month of travel. A
particular experience stands out.
We stood on the edge of the New Territories in Hong Kong on an overcast
day. We looked into The People’s Republic of China and saw a striking
absence of life and activity in the expanse before us. Our guide said
softly, “A great veil of silence has come down.”
The experience was chilling, a sentiment appropriate for that year. It
was within the decade of the Cultural Revolution that disrupted the lives
of young college students and separated and dispersed Church leadership
throughout the country into factories, rural areas and public works.
Visit from an exiled bishop
Twelve years later, we here in the Oakland Diocese had a surprise
visit from the exiled Bishop of Canton, Dominic Tang Ye-Min, a prisoner
for 22 years, eight of those in solitary confinement. He was released
that spring of 1980 because of the discovery of cancer. He would live
15 more years, often enough a visitor here, influential in establishing
the house of hospitality in Berkeley for Chinese scholars.
We inquired of him concerning hope for the Church in China. He rather
dismissed the question indicating that everybody knew who the pope was.
I raised the inevitable confusion caused by the official Patriotic Church.
He was easy, commenting that after 30 years without the sacraments one
becomes hungry.
In a few years, having experienced aspects of government practice, he
would do some reassessment, but he would hold his original posture: “I
resisted; that is why I was always free.”
Six years later, a group of us from the diocese — three priests,
two religious, and members of a Chinese-born family — visited the
mainland. Our instructions from Hong Kong observers were clear. We were
not to seek out those we called “The Underground Church.”
We also were not to receive the sacraments even though we attended Mass
at the cathedral in Canton.
The rite was the old one in Latin, carefully done with altar servers in
starched surplices, with people saying the rosary and a choir singing
“O Esca Viatorum” — all during the Eucharistic Prayer.
We met three bishops, one of whom, the Franciscan bishop of Wuhan, impressed
us deeply. Our judgment was correct. We would learn soon that he had been
reconciled to Rome and was in communion with our Holy Father.
Respectful dialogue
A decade later, I participated in a meeting of Chinese American
Catholics in San Francisco sponsored by the U.S. bishops’ Committee
on Migration. Sixteen bishops attended. We had to exercise care in our
invitations to participants so as to assure the possibility of calm and
respectful dialogue.
The theme of the meeting was set by then Auxiliary Bishop-elect of Hong
Kong John Tong. He forcefully explained both the reality and the papal
policy that there was but one Church in China. The cause of conflict was
not the Catholic people but the policy and hostility of the government
and its agencies.
Within the decade, I visited China again. Bishop Jin in Shanghai spent
the day with us at his seminary and in a newly constructed retreat house.
In Beijing, we were taken to lunch by seminary professors educated at
the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., St. Vincent’s
Abbey in Latrobe, PA and the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
Shortly after that, I experienced the Church in Changchun in the northeast
part of China. The bishop, clearly identifiable on the street, welcomed
us and provided a meal. At one point with impatience he urged us, “You
practice your French.”
Father Brian Barron, a Maryknoll missioner, was our guide along with others
of his colleagues at the university in the nearby city of Jilin. Some
of the Sisters we met were educated in Germany.
The rector of the seminary, whose family has been Catholic for many generations,
was quick to answer our questions and declared his greatest needs were
heat in the wintertime and his ability to understand the younger generation.
The letter of Pope Benedict comes into this moving, puzzling and, in so
many ways, unhappy situation. He is very authentic in his praise of the
faithfulness of Chinese Catholics through these difficult years. He has
a sense of the tension that is deeply rooted and explains the need of
unity of all those in the Church.
He notes that even the first generation of Christians experienced division
and indicates that communion is a responsibility for every generation
within the Church. That unity is with one another but especially with
the bishops and, of course, with our Holy Father.
With admirable sensitivity he recognizes a resource in the martyrs for
the faith who reached the level of being able to forgive.
That same communion required of the Church is extended in a manner to
governmental authorities. With clarity and firmness, our Holy Father explains
fundamental Church understandings of its divine mission carried on by
unity of people with the bishops and with the successor of St. Peter.
That mission is not to be directed by those not delegated.
He makes a simple, forceful point that Church decisions and mission are
not to be defined by those not even baptized.
He is elemental in his instruction. The Vatican Council, Pope John Paul
II, and Pope Benedict himself in his first encyclical have noted that
the Church does not have a political role. Dialogue can clarify this.
Furthermore, a freedom given to the Catholic people can bring about the
admonition of the pope to his own for “generous and effective service
for the good of the people and the development of the country.”
He follows that with the words of Pope John Paul II: “The Church
has very much at heart the values and objectives which are of primary
importance also to modern China – solidarity, peace, social justice,
the wise management of the phenomenon of globalization.”
Pope Benedict XVI speaks of “grave limitations” that still
exist. His letter reaches to high levels of government. It steps beyond
the bureaucracy that exists with the Patriotic Association and the Office
for Religious Affairs. One can expect great resistance and undermining
of efforts at dialogue from these groups.
Judicious observation
A judicious observation by one of the Chinese bishops has to
be noted. The government’s efforts at persecution in the last half
century have failed. Even with Church leadership so terribly diminished,
of priests and religious exiled or in prison and prevented from exercising
their ministry, the numbers of Catholics in China have grown.
One might think of the words of Gamaliel from the Acts of the Apostles
(5: 38-39):”If this enterprise, this movement of theirs, is of human
origin it will break up of its own accord; but if it does in fact come
from God you will be unable to destroy them.”
The clerical leadership in China is old, but now there has been added
the young. That leadership is indeed Chinese, not foreign. The effort
to establish a church in China independent of the universal Church has
not produced its effect since the vast majority of bishops are reconciled
to Rome and are in communion with the Holy Father.
Pope Benedict’s letter represents guidance for the Catholic people
and the calm invitation to dialogue for the government. “Serene
and sensitive” are words that have been used.
There is the promise of the pope as well — “Be assured that
the whole Church will raise up an insistent prayer for you.” Trusting
always in the Holy Spirit and grace to change and renew our own hearts,
he set May 24 as the date for the universal Church to support the Catholics
in China in prayer and to open the hearts and minds of Chinese civic officials.
