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The Vatican Extends Xi s Pontificate – WSJ

By Thomas A. Smith

Diplomatic gobbledygook can t obscure awkward facts. Four years after the provisional agreement, many Chinese dioceses remain without a bishop. The underground church is still underground. Local Communist officials continue to bulldoze churches at their discretion. Bishops continue to be arrested or simply disappear. Hong Kong s former bishop, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, is currently on trial for colluding with foreign forces for his involvement with a fund defending protesters. Beijing continues to make amply clear that the Catholic Church is subservient to the state with Catholic belief and practice subject to party doctrine.

One might argue that the church is skilled at thinking in the very long term, knowing that times, conditions and regimes change. A neutral observer might easily see the current moment as an inflection point in global affairs. Chinese power and influence are on the rise. Western hegemony seems to be in decline. The papacy has rarely been averse to shrewd realpolitik, so a Vatican strategy that bets on China and an eventual softening of Beijing s approach to religion could make sense. It also fits comfortably with chronic European resentments of the U.S., shared at times within the Holy See, and the Latin American animus against the giant to the North in Francis s pontificate.

But as former Czech dissident Václav Havel warned decades ago, ideological states are resilient. They re not like standard dictatorships. China s ruling elite and vigorous nationalism may seem familiar, but they re not. They re sustained by a left ideology that functions as a gnostic religion, hostile to any competitors. When combined with China s social-credit and control system the most invasive and pervasive in history the church faces an entirely new kind of Caesar.

via www.wsj.com

Imagine having the job of being one of those phony bishops. Well, at least you’d be allowed to be married I guess.

To the Church, $100 million is a lot of money. How easy it would be for the PRC to grease the Vatican’s wheels towards this sort of “cooperation.” How could Chinese Catholics feel anything but betrayed?