The Holy See, Beijing, and the future of Sino-Vatican relations

Sep 19, 2024

By Jonathan Y. Tan
Pope Francis responded to reporters' queries about China as he flew back to Rome from Singapore on Sept. 13, concluding his marathon 11-day tour of four nations in the Asia-Pacific. “China is a promise and a hope for the Church. I would love to visit China,” he said.

From Francis’ perspective, China, the world’s second-most populous country after India, while nominally secular and communist, is experiencing a resurgence in religious practice in the post-Mao era.

Today, China has the world’s largest Buddhist population, a thriving Daoist community, and an expanding Muslim community, which is larger than the total Christian population in China.

Daoist temples and Buddhist monasteries shuttered during the Cultural Revolution have reopened and new temples and monasteries are being built to accommodate the growing number of devotees.

China has a small but thriving Christian community. According to unofficial estimates, Chinese Catholics number around 10 million, less than Protestants.

Many Catholics live in the northern province of Hebei, home to about one-quarter of China’s Catholics, followed by the Fujian and Zhejiang coastal regions.

The focal point for Sino-Vatican relations is the 2018 accord, which the Holy See and China jointly signed. It reportedly allows both parties to have a say in appointing bishops for the Catholic Church in China. The document, signed initially as an experiment for two years, was renewed in 2020 and 2022 and is up for renewal in October 2024.

The Holy See has maintained that the agreement is pastoral in orientation and seeks to provide episcopal leadership to those who are in communion with the Holy See and to lead and minister to China’s growing Catholic community as one united Catholic Church.

Chinese Catholics in the Mao era
The historical backdrop to the 2018 joint accord can be traced to the fraught church-state relations in post-1949 China. At that time, the Communist Party of China (CPC) sought to align all religions with the communist ideology. The CPC was particularly concerned about the leadership and finances of Chinese Christian Churches — Protestant and Catholic — that were largely foreign in nature.

At first, the communist authorities sought to promote local leadership and autonomy among Chinese Catholics through persuasive means while acknowledging that the Holy See exercises spiritual authority over Chinese Catholics.

However, the international embargo imposed on China during the Korean War (1950-1953) accelerated the CPC leadership’s desire to purge Chinese Christians of foreign leadership and funding. Foreign Catholic bishops and missionaries were expelled. Many native Chinese clergy and lay people also fled China, fearing communist persecution.

In 1951, the CPC established the Religious Affairs Bureau to oversee and reform China’s diverse religions in accordance with the official communist ideology of China. In 1957, the Religious Affairs Bureau (now the National Religious Affairs Administration) worked with sympathetic native Chinese Catholic bishops and clergy to establish the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA).

One of the CCPA's central tenets and a sticking point in Sino-Vatican relations is the principle of “self-election and self-ordination.” From 1958 onwards, the CCPA appointed native Chinese bishops independently without the pope's consent.

In his 1958 encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis, Pope Pius XII declared such episcopal appointments and consecrations done without papal consent illicit. Many Chinese Catholic clergy and lay faithful also rejected the oversight of the CCPA and CCPA-appointed bishops, establishing underground house churches.

This question of episcopal appointments remains the major sticking point in improving Sino-Vatican relations.

Dilemma and opportunities
In reality, the Vatican was also caught in a dilemma. China’s enforced separation and severance of Chinese Catholics from Rome led to an increasingly aging Chinese episcopacy.

Bishop Peter Joseph Fan Xueyan of Baoding, after his release from prison in 1979, made the unilateral, reluctant, yet radical decision to ordain three new underground bishops in 1981 without prior consultation with the Holy See: Bishop Jia Zhiguo of Zhending diocese, Bishop Wang Milu of Tianshui diocese in Gansu province, and Bishop Zhou Shanfu of Yixian diocese.

Subsequently, Pope John Paul II accepted Bishop Fan’s unilateral actions and regularized these three irregular underground episcopal ordinations.

Acknowledging the reality of an aging and dying episcopate for the underground Church, Pope John Paul II, by a special faculty in 1981, quietly authorized nine bishops — five underground and four CCPA bishops who were ordained before 1952 — to ordain new bishops for the Chinese Catholic Church.

Pope John Paul II's unprecedented action was built upon Pope Paul VI's decision in 1978 to authorize the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples to grant dispensations to the canonical rules for the underground Chinese Catholic Church in the celebration of the sacraments and ordination of candidates to the priesthood without meeting the canonical requirements of formal seminary training.

More importantly, Pope John Paul II’s special faculty to both underground and CCPA bishops to appoint and consecrate new bishops in communion with the Holy See blurred the line between the underground and the CCPA Catholic bishops.

As a result, since the 1980s, there has been little difference between the underground and the CCPA churches. Theologically, liturgically, and pastorally, the CCPA Church is in line with mainstream Catholicism. It follows the doctrines and dogmas of the universal Catholic Church, including the male priesthood and mandatory clerical celibacy. The CCPA, though, did, for some time, exert intense pressure on the clergy to get married.

As far as the Holy See is concerned, there is one Catholic Church in terms of theology, ecclesiology, and liturgy. The one stumbling block remains the political question of the power and authority to select and appoint new bishops.

In the meantime, the overwhelming majority of CCPA bishops also sought and were rehabilitated and recognized by the Holy See, giving rise to the unusual situation of bishops with dual loyalties to both the Holy See and the CCPA.

The best-known example of Chinese bishops with dual loyalties is the late Aloysius Jin Luxian (1916-2013), who in an interview with The Atlantic in 2007 said: “The Vatican thinks that I don’t work enough for the Vatican and the government thinks that I work too much for the Vatican.”

A lifelong Jesuit in good standing, Aloysius Jin joined the CCPA after his release from prison and was instrumental in persuading the CCPA to accept the decrees of Vatican II, the post-Vatican II Chinese liturgy, and the inclusion of the pope in the eucharistic prayer, thereby publicly acknowledging the Holy See as the spiritual leader of all Chinese Catholics during the Mass.

Ordained a bishop without Vatican approval in 1985, Bishop Jin became the CCPA-appointed bishop of Shanghai from 1988 to 2013. Behind the scenes, he submitted to papal authority and worked closely with the underground Bishop of Shanghai, Joseph Fan Zhongliang.

In 2004, the Holy See recognized Bishop Jin as the coadjutor bishop of Shanghai to Bishop Joseph Fan and Pope Benedict XVI invited him to the 2005 synod of bishops. Unfortunately, Beijing refused permission for him to travel abroad.

Moving with optimism 
The deal the Holy See and Beijing jointly signed in 2018 is far from perfect. Since then, there have been several high-profile disagreements and tensions over episcopal appointments and transfers and the designation of new Catholic dioceses for China’s growing Catholic community.

Nonetheless, the Holy See has sought to build a healthy and positive relationship with China, as evidenced by the renewal of this agreement for a two-year period twice, in 2020 and 2022.

The joint appointments of three new bishops in January 2024 for Zhengzhou (Taddeo Wang Yuesheng), Minbei (Peter Wu Yishun), and Weifang (Anthony Sun Wenjun), as well as Beijing’s recent belated recognition of Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen, who has refused to join the CCPA, as the bishop of Tianjin in August 2024 suggest that both parties are keen on renewing the accord when it expires next month.

From the Holy See’s perspective, this joint accord is an important first step to rapprochement with the Chinese government and growing the Catholic Church in China.

Clearly, Pope Francis wishes not only to encourage and empower Chinese Catholics as they thrive and grow but also to shine a spotlight on China as an exemplar for the Church in Europe and North America, where a small Catholic minority can flourish amidst the challenges of official secularism and religious diversity and plurality.--ucanews.com