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| Cardinal Zen |
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| Francis I |
I know we
were all expecting the crack to come from a completely different corner of the
Church, and that hardly anyone
has been paying attention to
the eagerness of the Francis Vatican to throw the Catholic Church in China to
the communist wolves.
As with every
jurisdictional Vatican compromise with Communist governments the
one in the offing smells of betrayal. There have been four secret meetings
between Vatican representatives and Chinese government officials in the past
two years, the most recent being at the end of April. Cardinal Zen, retired
Bishop of Hong Kong, is not at all optimistic. He does not trust anything that
Beijing would offer:
“We do not
see any sign that would encourage the hope that the Chinese Communists are
about to change their restrictive religious policy…..It is unthinkable to
leave the initial proposal in the hands of an atheist government who cannot
possibly judge the suitability of a candidate to be a bishop.”
The gist
seems to be that the Vatican is working on a deal with the Chinese communists
to “ratify” the government’s picks for Catholic bishops, essentially, placing
the faithful into the care of those kinds of bishops that their brutal
communist bully-boy government thinks are suitable.
But here
it is: the first Cardinal of the Catholic Church who has finally confronted
Francis.
Cardinal
Zen – who has been one of the most outspoken defenders of the Faith in the worst possible
circumstances – has said it: Do not follow this pope into his evil
designs to destroy Holy Mother Church.
Should an
agreement be reached between China and the Holy See, this will certainly have
“the Pope’s approval”. But China’s Catholics will not be obliged to take it
into consideration if their “conscience” tells them it is “against their
principle of faith”. This is according to the Bishop Emeritus of Hong
Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen.
Don’t
discount this, people. It means there are still lines that can’t be crossed.
Cardinal Zen has been fighting this battle for the Catholic Church and the
Catholic faithful in China for many years. And for most of that time he has had
to fight it on two fronts; from attacks from Beijing – which are often of a
most physically brutal kind – and from diplomatic attacks from Rome. It has
been many, many years since anyone in the Vatican has had the bests spiritual
interests of the faithful in China at heart.
Ostpolitic
wasn’t just something that got invented at Vatican II to bring in Russian
observers from the KGB-controlled Russian Orthodox. Vatican Secretaries of
State have been applying the flagellum to the Body of Christ in China for most
of my lifetime. Given that we’re talking about a Catholic population of about
65 million people – about the equivalent of the population of Italy or Britain,
twice the entire population of Canada – that’s not an insignificant betrayal.
It makes the Mindszenty affair look like an embassy garden party.
It’s also
not insignificant that the de facto leader of 65 million
Catholics has called for the faithful to oppose the pope who is flogging Christ
in the person of the Church in China.
It’s also
notable that the article itself is another hit piece from our good friends at
La Stampa who recently lashed
out at the opponents of Jorge’s little plans for us all.
In this
piece from at One Peter Five, Steve speculates that they are lashing out
precisely because they are discovering that the opposition is louder and more
persistent – and more effective – than they had bargained for. Steve wrote
about the Vatican “quietly panicking over its inability to comprehend the sort
of asymmetrical information warfare they are faced with.”
“They
cannot accurately gauge — let alone neutralize — the expansive influence of
critics who operate almost entirely outside of established structures, instead
building audiences predominately online and across a broad spectrum of social
media platforms.”
I
commented that this is something that utterly freaks them out.
They
really have no idea at all how the internet works or what it is for. I remember
them being completely paranoid about people using their phones in the
journalists’ room at the Conclave. They actually had it set up to block all
internet access in the hall they set up for journalists, and then couldn’t
figure out why no one came to use it. The real journalists did all their
interviewing in bars and cafes in the Borgo on the other side of the piazza.
At their
press conferences, they really don’t understand how information about what’s
being said unofficially (the Q&A) gets out before the press conference is
even over. Most of these people have only just started to use email. They
are totally accustomed to thinking themselves in complete control of the
message, and the fact that they don’t even know how information is spread is
something they’re vaguely aware of, but terrifies them.
“How do
these people keep finding this stuff out?!!!”
We’re
magic.
It does
seem like the Vatican machine is in defensive mode lately. We’ve been having
people contact us with the very interesting information that certain key texts
from previous popes have just gone magically missing from the .va website. So
far we have seen disappeared Pius IX on the
social reign of Christ the King and the inadmissibility of “ecumenism” as the term is currently used in
ecclesiastical circles; and some documents from John Paul II (“Saint”) on the nature of
marriage and
the inadmissibility of allowing those in unrepentant adulterous liaisons to
receive Holy Communion.
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