Pope Francis to join interfaith prayer for peace at Colosseum in Rome

Vatican City, Oct 22, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican and China have renewed a provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops for two more years, the Holy See announced Thursday.

An Oct. 22 Vatican communique said that the Chinese government and Vatican authorities agreed to extend “to extend the experimental implementation phase” of the two-year provisional agreement first signed on Sept. 22, 2018, concerning the nomination of bishops. It added that the two parties intended to pursue “an open and constructive dialogue.”

“The Holy See considers the initial application of the agreement — which is of great ecclesial  and pastoral value — to have been positive, thanks to good communication and cooperation between the parties on the matters agreed upon, and intends to pursue an open and constructive dialogue for  the benefit of the life of the Catholic Church and the good of Chinese people,” the communique said.

An article in L’Osservatore Romano Oct. 22 lauded the results of the agreement, saying that “processes for new episcopal appointments are underway, some at an early stage, others at an advanced stage.”

It reported that two bishops have already been appointed under the “regulatory framework established by the agreement”: Bishop Antonio Yao Shun, of Jining Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia, and Bishop Stefano Xu Hongwei, of Hanzhong in Shaanxi Province.

“It must be acknowledged that there are many situations of great suffering. The Holy See is deeply aware of this, takes it into account and does not fail to attract the attention of the Chinese government to encourage a more fruitful exercise of religious freedom. The path is still long and not without difficulties,” the Vatican newspaper stated.

Following the Vatican-China agreement in 2018, state officials in different regions of China removed crosses and demolished church buildings, and underground Catholics and clergy have reported harassment and detention. A 2020 report of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China found that Chinese Catholics suffered “increasing persecution” after the deal.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin told journalists Oct. 21 that he was “happy” with the agreement. But he acknowledged “there are also many other problems that the agreement was not intended to solve.” 

The cardinal said that the goal of the agreement is “unity of the Church” and that through this unity “it will become an instrument of evangelization,” according to a transcript provided by Italian newspaper Avvenire.

When asked about the persecution of Christians in China, Parolin responded: “But, what persecutions … You have to use the words correctly. There are regulations that are imposed and which concern all religions, and certainly also concern the Catholic Church.”

In China, religious education of any person under the age of 18 is illegal. This means that catechism classes have been closed and minors are not allowed to enter church buildings. Catholic churches registered with the Chinese authorities are closely monitored via CCTV cameras connected to the public security network. Priests have been forced to attend government training courses.

The Chinese government continues to imprison Catholic clergy who refuse to support the Communist Party, according to a September report out of the province of Jiangxi.

But other religious groups have fared far worse under the Chinese Communist Party’s policies of “sincization” and technological control, particularly the Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province, who have suffered forced labor, indoctrination, sterilization, forced abortion, and torture in dentention camps.

While introducing more restrictive rules on religious practice, President Xi Jinping’s repeatedly stated goal has been the “sinicization” of religions. The authorities have sought to diffuse “religious theories with Chinese character” into the five official religions supervised by the government, including the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. This has included instructing Chistian churches to remove images of the Ten Commandments and replace them with sayings of Chairman Mao and Xi.

In March 2018, the Chinese government instituted a major change in its religious regulation by placing the management of religions, including Catholicism, under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD). The United Front has the task of ensuring that groups outside of the CCP, such as Xinjiang Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists,  Hong Kong democracy activists, and the Catholic Patriotic Association, are following the party line.

Xi Jinping has called the United Front Work Department one of his “magic weapons,” used to co-opt and control.

Despite mounting international condemnation of China’s internment of more than a million Uyghurs in detention camps, neither Pope Francis nor the Holy See has commented publicly on the situation.

Cardinal Joseph Zen, the emeritus Bishop of Hong Kong, attributes this silence to the Vatican’s ongoing diplomatic talks with the Chinese government.

“It seems that in order to save the agreement, the Holy See is closing both eyes on all the injustices that the Communist Party inflicts on the Chinese people,” Zen wrote Oct. 7.

The Vatican-China agreement gave CCP officials a say in the ordination of bishops, but also allowed for the enforcement of “sinicization” in Church matters, Zen said. 

Cardinal Parolin has previously compared “sinicization’” to the Church’s practice of “inculturation,” saying in 2019 that “these two terms … refer to each other without confusion and without opposition.”

In his most recent comments to journalists this week, Parolin said that the contents of the Sino-Vatican agreement will not be made public. But he added that what has been agreed to thus far “does not envisage the establishment of diplomatic relations.”

“On both sides, as long as the agreement is ad experimentum [provisional], it was decided to keep the contents confidential,” Parolin said, 

“For the moment there is no talk of diplomatic relations, we are focused on the Church,” he said. The agreement does not concern diplomatic relations nor does it envisage the establishment of diplomatic relations. The agreement concerns the situation of the Church, a specific point which are the appointments of bishops and the difficulties that exist and that we hope to tackle through dialogue.”

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CNA Staff, Feb 16, 2021 / 01:03 pm (CNA).- A statement Tuesday from the bishops of England and Wales said they are “distressed” by recent reports that COVID-19 patients are being given “do not resuscitate” orders solely on the grounds of intellectual d… […]

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica on March 26, 2005, in Vatican City. / Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images

Denver, Colo., Feb 19, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Six lectures of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger were almost lost forever. But now, they have been collected in a new Ignatius Press book, “The Divine Project: Reflections on Creation and Church.”

“It’s a wonderful summation of what God intends in creating us and redeeming us, in six lectures. It’s just a great find,” Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, president of Ignatius Press, told CNA. “It’s written for students and spoken for students. It’s really quite readable.”

The future Pope Benedict XVI delivered the series of lectures in 1985 at the Bishop of Gurk’s formation house at St. George’s Abbey in Längsee in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia. They were recorded on audio cassettes but the tapes were misplaced for 30 years and forgotten. By chance, they were rediscovered.

“It was a treasure that was lost and found again,” said Fessio, who studied under Ratzinger when the future pontiff was a theologian and university professor. Ratzinger would serve as a cardinal under Pope John Paul II. He was elected pope in 2005.

The lectures were first published in German in 2008, but Ignatius Press is the first to publish them in English, in a 177-page book.

Fessio stressed Ratzinger’s emphasis on Scripture.

“He always goes back to Scripture when he is presenting on any topic,” Fessio commented. “This is theological. It has to do with faith, of course. His interpretation of Genesis brings it right up to the present. He understands traditional scholarship and the historical-critical method, but he’s able to make it come alive.”

Ratzinger’s lectures reflect upon God as the creator of a reasonable cosmos, in which each man and woman is ultimately a creature. He considers how to read the Bible and understand original sin and redemption.

Ratzinger considers the first eight lines of the Book of Genesis, about the creation of the heavens and the earth.

“Is this merely a beautiful passage, or does this beauty also reveal something of the truth?” he asks. “And if so, how do we find it?”

He reflects on explanations of Genesis that engage scientific accounts of the universe and of humankind, including evolutionary theory. He asks whether and how the scientific and Christian approaches can complement each other, and he ponders the place of the Genesis account of creation in historic Christian thought, including the fall of humankind through Adam.

The early Church and the Middle Ages “understood that the Bible is one whole and that we can only truly hear what it is saying if we hear it as coming from Christ,” Ratzinger explains.

“This means hearing it in the freedom that he has given us and from the depths where, through the screen of images, he reveals the true and enduring reality, the solid ground on which we can always stand,” he says.

Fessio told CNA that the Book of Genesis is written in “a very parabolic or even mythical way.” In Ratzinger’s commentary, the Old Testament must be read as a preparation for the New Testament. The Bible should be read as a whole.

“Its parts help to understand each other and [to understand] that Christ is the goal and therefore the key of interpretation,” Fessio said. He added that Ratzinger’s lectures show “how Creation was made for the worship of God, for the Sabbath, for the day of worship, and the day that God rested.”

“If God is the Creator, it means we are creatures,” Fessio added. “It means that we do not create ourselves, we depend for existence on God and on others.

“[Ratzinger] spends a lot of time on how man is relational. We come from parents, we live for others. We give ourselves to a project we can’t consider ourselves,” he said.

“We’re not just autonomous monads floating around each other,” Fessio said. “Rather, we’re connected to each other because we’re connected to God, who himself is relationship as the Trinity.”

Ratzinger considers the place of necessity and chance in creation and contemporary attitudes about the place of each person in the world. He notes that many object, saying, “No one ever asked me if I wanted to be born!”

To this, Ratzinger responds: “It is only when we know that there is One who did not cast lots blindly, when we know that our existence is not an accident, but is rather born of freedom and love, only then can we, whose existence is not necessary, be thankful for this freedom and know, with gratitude, that it is indeed a gift to be human.”

According to Fessio, Ratzinger is “expounding the Catholic faith, but doing it in a contemporary language.”

“Sin is the destruction of that relationship with ourselves and God, and then among each other. [Ratzinger] makes the very important point that there’s no such thing as an individual sin that doesn’t have effects on others,” the priest said. “Every turn away from God’s plan, God’s law, affects not only oneself, but everyone else, as well.”

This can be healed “by losing self and turning to Christ,” the source of our love, Fessio commented. Ratzinger emphasizes “how important the Eucharist is in restoring fallen man to unity with himself and with God.”

Other topics in “The Divine Project” include technology and ecology, the cross and the Eucharist, religious pluralism, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, and the nature of the Church.

For Fessio, the theologian’s former student, the qualities of Benedict XVI are evident in the book.

Cardinal Ratzinger was “brilliant and humble, warm, holy, a good listener,” Fessio said.

“He had a tremendous ability to synthesize the thoughts of others and present them in a clear and compelling way,” he said. “He was just simply a great teacher. And therefore, those of us who are learners do well to turn to that great teacher whenever we can.”

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