Pilgrims wave a Chinese flag at the general audience with Pope Francis, Oct. 12, 2022. / Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Oct 22, 2022 / 04:05 am (CNA).
The Vatican announced Saturday it has renewed its 2018 deal with China on the appointment of Catholic bishops for an additional two years.
“After appropriate consultation and assessment, the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China have agreed to extend for another two years the Provisional Agreement regarding the appointment of Bishops,” the Vatican said in an Oct. 22 press release.
“The Vatican Party,” it continued, “is committed to continuing a respectful and constructive dialogue with the Chinese Party for a productive implementation of the Accord and further development of bilateral relations, with a view to fostering the mission of the Catholic Church and the good of the Chinese people.”
The provisional agreement between the Vatican and China was first signed in September 2018 and renewed for another two years in October 2020. The terms of the deal have not been made public.
Pope Francis said in July that he hoped the agreement would be renewed for a second time.
In an interview with Reuters published July 5, the pope defended the Vatican-China deal against its critics, saying, “Diplomacy is the art of the possible and of doing things to make the possible become a reality.”
He compared today’s critics and those who spoke negatively about the Vatican’s diplomatic decisions during the Cold War, when the popes struck deals with Eastern European communist governments in an attempt to protect the interests of the Catholic Church.
“Diplomacy is like that. When you face a blocked situation, you have to find the possible way, not the ideal way, out of it,” the pope said.
Speaking to Vatican News Oct. 22, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the Vatican-China deal is “still in the experimentation phase.”
“As is always the case, such difficult and delicate situations require adequate time for implementation in order to then be able to verify the effectiveness of the result and identify possible improvements,” he said in the new interview.
After the China deal was signed 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 from the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China found that Chinese Catholics suffered “increasing persecution” after the agreement came into effect.
While introducing more restrictive rules on religious practice, China’s President Xi Jinping has been outspoken about his goal of the “sinicization” of religions.
Chinese 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 Christian churches to remove images of the Ten Commandments and replace them with the sayings of Chairman Mao and Xi.
Parolin said “Pope Francis — with determination and patient foresight — has decided to continue along this path not under the illusion of finding perfection in human rules, but in the concrete hope of being able to assure Chinese Catholic communities, even in such a complex context, of the guidance of pastors who are worthy and suitable for the task entrusted to them.”
The provisional agreement with China on the appointment of bishops is “a limited but significant part,” Parolin said.
“Of course,” he continued, “we do not hide the numerous difficulties that affect the concrete life of the Catholic communities, which enjoy our utmost attention, and for the good solution of which new steps forward are necessary in a collaborative relationship that has multiple protagonists: the Holy See, the central authorities, the bishops with their communities, and the local authorities.”
“The ultimate goal of this journey is for the ‘little flock’ of Chinese Catholics to advance in the possibility of living serenely and freely their Christian life,” he said.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, retired bishop of Hong Kong, has been an outspoken critic of the Vatican’s China deal.
The cardinal, 90, was arrested in May along with other democracy activists under Hong Kong’s strict national security law.
He is standing trial for failing to properly register a fund to provide legal aid to pro-democracy protesters. The trial is scheduled to resume Oct. 26.
The story was updated at 4:37 a.m. MDT with the comments from Cardinal Parolin.
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Pope Francis meets with Father Federico Lombardi, president of the Ratzinger Foundation and Vatican spokesman during Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate (left), and the 2023 Ratzinger Prize recipients Father Pablo Blanco Sarto (center) and Professor… […]
Anna Lulis from Moneta, Virginia, (left) who works for the pro-life group Students for Life of America, stands beside an abortion rights demonstrator outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022, after the court’s decision in the Dobbs abortion case was announced. / Katie Yoder/CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 5, 2022 / 13:31 pm (CNA).
U.S. Catholic voters are split on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but a majority agrees that abortion should be restricted and that there should be at least some protections for the unborn child in the womb, according to a new EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll.
The court’s June 24 ruling in the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization upended 49 years of nationwide legalized abortion and freed states to regulate abortion as they see fit.
When asked whether they agreed or disagreed with Roe being overturned, 46.2% agreed, 47.8% disagreed, and 6% said they weren’t sure.
Catholic voters were similarly split on whether they are more or less likely to support a candidate who agrees with Roe’s dismantling: 42% said they were more likely, 41.9% said they were less likely, and 16.1% were unsure.
At the same time, the poll results point to apparent inconsistencies in Catholic voters’ positions on abortion.
While nearly half of Catholic voters in the poll said they disagreed with Roe being overturned, a large majority (86.5%) said they support some kind of limit on abortion, even though Roe and related abortion cases allowed only narrow regulation at the state level. The breakdown is as follows:
26.8% said abortion should be allowed only in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother;
19.8% said abortion should be allowed until 15 weeks when the baby can feel pain;
13.1% said that abortion should be allowed only during the first six months of pregnancy;
9.9% said that abortion should be allowed only until a heartbeat can be detected, and
9.1% said that abortion should be allowed only to save the life of the mother.
Of special note for Catholic pro-life leaders, only a small minority of Catholic voters — 7.8% — were aligned with the clear and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church that abortion should never be allowed.
On the other end of the spectrum of abortion views, 13.4% of Catholic voters said that abortion should be available to a woman at any time during her pregnancy.
The poll, conducted by the Trafalgar Group from Sept. 12–19, surveyed 1,581 Catholic voters and has a margin of error of 2.5%. The questionnaire was administered using a mix of six different methods, including phone calls, text messages, and email.
The poll’s results echo surveys of the general U.S. population on abortion. A Pew Research Center survey from March found that 19% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all cases, while 8% said it should be illegal in all cases. More recent Gallup data from May found that 35% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal under any circumstances while 13% said it should be illegal in all circumstances.
The Pew Research Center data also looked at Catholic adults. Thirteen percent said abortion should be legal in all cases, while 10% said it should be illegal in all cases.
A previous EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll released in July found that 9% of Catholic likely voters said abortion should never be permitted and 18% said that abortion should be available at any time. The poll similarly showed that a majority of Catholic voters (82%) support some kind of restriction on abortion.
Confused about what Roe said?
The poll’s results came as little surprise to Catholic pro-life public policy experts such as Elizabeth R. Kirk.
“This study confirms a phenomenon we have known for some time, i.e., that there is an enormous disconnect between the scope of abortion practices permitted by the Roe regime and what abortion practices Americans actually support,” Kirk, director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at The Catholic University of America, told CNA.
Kirk, who also serves as a faculty fellow for the Institute for Human Ecology and research associate and lecturer at the Columbus School of Law, noted the finding that nearly 42% of Catholic voters said they are less likely to support a candidate who agrees with Roe being overturned.
“At first glance that suggests that many Catholic voters wanted to keep Roe in place,” she said. “Yet, the study also reveals that 86.5% of Catholic voters want some type of restriction on abortion access.”
Why the inconsistency? “Most people do not realize that Roe allowed states to permit unlimited abortion access throughout the entire pregnancy and made it difficult, or even impossible, to enact commonsense restrictions supported by the majority of Americans,” Kirk observed.
“Many people who ‘support Roe’ actually disagree, unknowingly, with what it permitted,” she added. “All Dobbs has done is return abortion policy to the legislative process so that the people may enact laws which reflect the public consensus.”
Mass-goers more strongly pro-life
The new poll, the second of three surveys of Catholic voters tied to the midterm elections on Nov. 8, shows that the opinions of Catholic voters on abortion and other issues vary depending on how often respondents attend Mass.
Only a small portion of those who attend Mass at least once a week said that abortion should be allowed at any time: 0% of those who attend Mass daily, 1% who attend more than once a week, and 8% of those who attend weekly support abortion without restrictions. In contrast, 57.5% of Catholic voters who attend Mass daily, 21.5% of those who attend more than once a week, and 15.6% of those who attend weekly say abortion should never be permitted.
In addition to respondents’ apparent confusion about what Roe stipulated, the poll suggests that many Catholic voters don’t fully understand what their Church teaches about abortion.
Less than one-third of Catholic voters who said they accept all Church teachings (31.1%) said that abortion should never be permitted, and 5% who profess to fully accept the Church’s teachings said abortion should be permitted at any time.
Overall, 32.8% of respondents reported attending Mass at least once a week, with another 30.7% attending once a year or less. Only 15% agreed that they accept all of the Church’s teachings and live their lives accordingly, with another 34.5% saying they generally accept most of the Church’s teachings and try to live accordingly.
Pew Research Center also looked at how Mass attendance factors into Catholics’ views on abortion. Among those who attend Mass at least once a week: 4% said abortion should be legal in all cases, and 24% said it should be illegal in all cases, Pew found.
Strong support for pregnancy centers
The poll asked Catholic voters about a variety of other topics including abortion limits, Holy Communion for pro-abortion politicians, conscience protections for health care workers, and pro-life pregnancy centers.
EWTN
Among the findings:
Catholic voters are prioritizing other issues above abortion. Only 10.1% of Catholic voters identified abortion as the most important issue facing the nation, falling behind inflation (34.2%) and the economy/jobs (19.7%) and tying with immigration. At the same time, a higher percentage of Catholic voters chose abortion than crime (8.7%), climate change (8.1% ), health care (6.8%), K–12 education (1.7%), or religious freedom (0.8%).
About half of Catholic voters (49.3%) disagreed that Catholic political leaders who support abortion publicly and promote policies that increase abortion access should refrain from taking Communion, while 36.7% said they should refrain.
A majority (67.4%) of Catholic voters said they support public funding for pro-life pregnancy centers that offer pregnant women life-affirming alternatives to abortion, while 18.3% said they did not favor using tax dollars for this purpose.
A comparable majority (61.8%) said that political and church leaders should be speaking out against the recent attacks and acts of vandalism on pregnancy resource centers.
When asked about conscience protections for health care workers that would allow them to opt out of providing “services” such as abortion, a majority of Catholic voters (60.7%) said that health care workers should not be obligated to engage in procedures that they object to based on moral or religious grounds. Conversely, 25.3% said that health care workers should be obligated to engage in procedures that they object to based on moral or religious grounds.
Work to be done
What is the takeaway from the latest poll, where abortion is concerned?
“This polling shows that Catholics, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, support commonsense protections for women and the unborn,” Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, told CNA.
“It also affirms other recent polling that found Americans by strong numbers support the work of pregnancy resource centers in providing women facing crisis pregnancies with a real choice and the chance to thrive as mothers despite difficult circumstances,” she noted.
EWTN
At the same time, McGuire added, “This new polling is also a reminder that more work needs to be done in catechizing Catholics on foundational Church teaching in support of vulnerable life in all stages — an effort that is continually undermined by Catholic politicians in the highest echelons of power who use their platforms to advocate for extreme abortion policies in direct violation of Church teaching.”
Nearly all of those surveyed (99.2%) said they plan to vote in the midterm elections on Nov. 8.
The beatification of Father Leonard Melki and Father Thomas Saleh in Jal el Dib, Lebanon, on June 4, 2022. / Guitta Maroun/ACI MENA.
Rome Newsroom, Jun 6, 2022 / 09:40 am (CNA).
Two Catholic priests martyred under the Ottoman Empire were beatif… […]
11 Comments
The quotation is from the first MSN link, (from AP) which also has interesting photos, eg. where Hu Jintao departing early pats Li Keqiang.
The second MSN link has a video (MSN/WSJ) clip with remarks by Xi Xinping. The whole presentation coming out of these links can be seen to have put a stress on “Xi Xinping thought” and “securing looking after the people”. (Somewhat as had been mentioned in CWR in recent times!)
The last two MSN links (WSJ, Canadian Press) give more extensive background and historical insights.
‘ “The congress calls on all party members to acquire a deep understanding of the decisive significance of establishing comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the party Central Committee and in the party as a whole and establishing the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought,” said a resolution on the constitution approved at Saturday’s closing session.
“Xi Jinping Thought” refers to his ideology, which was enshrined in the party charter at the previous congress in 2017.
In brief closing remarks, Xi said the revision to the constitution “sets out clear requirements for upholding and strengthening the party’s overall leadership.” ‘
I have nothing but contempt for the agreement and those who negotiated this great betrayal. In the interest of being mischievous, however, I will say that the CCP is less likely than the Francis Vatican to appoint homosexuals as bishops. Even as skillful a Jesuit as Hollerich would find his case for unnatural sex to be a tough sell with the no-nonsense Red China, which has little patience for such absurdities.
Well they now have “pastors who are worthy and suitable,” just like Parolin and Francis knew they would when they betrayed faithful followers of Christ to subjugate the Catholic Church to the most evil oppressive regime in the history of the world.
This pope is a travesty. After all those many years that Chinese Catholics suffered for keeping the faith, this pope just shows utter contempt for them while being complicit with the repressive, atheist, communist regime.
He and those who support him should hang their heads in shame for the havoc they are wreaking on the Church.
Does this ultimately reflect the meaning of Vatican II? I remember in Catholic history a controversy over “lay investiture,” where politicians appointed bishops. Thomas a Becket lost his life in this conflict between Altar and Throne. Are we now supposed to bow before the Throne?
Quote “Can evangelization succeed if efforts to “dialogue” with persecutors muzzle the Church’s prophetic voice in speaking truth to worldly power?
The answer is No
I have read that Pope Francis has placed the Chinese Catholics under the protection (Tent) of of His esteemed mother St Mary Rather we look to the light of Christ while being guided by the Holy Spirit who teaches us not to collude with evil within ourselves and others and in doing so, we bear witness to the Truth, and this forms the basis of how we evangelize.
“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live”
In trust, we look to God Alone for our protection. As His true peace is given to us in our faithfulness to Him (Alone) via the light of the Holy Spirit which cannot be taken from us.
Note. I appear to have been locked into the same opening page since the 17th of September 2022 making it difficult to function (Follow posts etc) with ease on the Catholic World Site (Only). I have tried using another computer to no effect, is this happening to anyone else?
An inviolable issue is the integrity of divine revelation and the right of the Catholic Church to express it in her doctrines, liturgy, and messaging. If Sinicization per this latest Vatican China renewal omits, subverts this revelation, the agreement is an immoral capitulation.
The quotation is from the first MSN link, (from AP) which also has interesting photos, eg. where Hu Jintao departing early pats Li Keqiang.
The second MSN link has a video (MSN/WSJ) clip with remarks by Xi Xinping. The whole presentation coming out of these links can be seen to have put a stress on “Xi Xinping thought” and “securing looking after the people”. (Somewhat as had been mentioned in CWR in recent times!)
The last two MSN links (WSJ, Canadian Press) give more extensive background and historical insights.
‘ “The congress calls on all party members to acquire a deep understanding of the decisive significance of establishing comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the party Central Committee and in the party as a whole and establishing the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought,” said a resolution on the constitution approved at Saturday’s closing session.
“Xi Jinping Thought” refers to his ideology, which was enshrined in the party charter at the previous congress in 2017.
In brief closing remarks, Xi said the revision to the constitution “sets out clear requirements for upholding and strengthening the party’s overall leadership.” ‘
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/us/chinas-communist-party-amends-charter-as-its-congress-ends/ar-AA13fyTn
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/chinas-communist-party-congress-kicks-off-with-xi-set-to-extend-rule/vi-AA131nDo?ocid=mailsignout%2Cmailsignout&category=foryou
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-s-xi-jinping-moves-to-extend-rule-as-top-communist-party-rivals-retire/ar-AA13fq4l?cvid=79e295c10577454eb2d460ed87b28cec
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/china-reaffirms-xis-dominance-removes-no-2-li-keqiang/ar-AA13fE34
I have nothing but contempt for the agreement and those who negotiated this great betrayal. In the interest of being mischievous, however, I will say that the CCP is less likely than the Francis Vatican to appoint homosexuals as bishops. Even as skillful a Jesuit as Hollerich would find his case for unnatural sex to be a tough sell with the no-nonsense Red China, which has little patience for such absurdities.
I find myself in agreement. Thanks, Tony.
And Chinese Catholics benefit from this agreement how?? Exactly??
Well they now have “pastors who are worthy and suitable,” just like Parolin and Francis knew they would when they betrayed faithful followers of Christ to subjugate the Catholic Church to the most evil oppressive regime in the history of the world.
Once more Pope Neville Chamberlain acts as the Great Appeaser.
This pope is a travesty. After all those many years that Chinese Catholics suffered for keeping the faith, this pope just shows utter contempt for them while being complicit with the repressive, atheist, communist regime.
He and those who support him should hang their heads in shame for the havoc they are wreaking on the Church.
Does this ultimately reflect the meaning of Vatican II? I remember in Catholic history a controversy over “lay investiture,” where politicians appointed bishops. Thomas a Becket lost his life in this conflict between Altar and Throne. Are we now supposed to bow before the Throne?
Quote “Can evangelization succeed if efforts to “dialogue” with persecutors muzzle the Church’s prophetic voice in speaking truth to worldly power?
The answer is No
I have read that Pope Francis has placed the Chinese Catholics under the protection (Tent) of of His esteemed mother St Mary Rather we look to the light of Christ while being guided by the Holy Spirit who teaches us not to collude with evil within ourselves and others and in doing so, we bear witness to the Truth, and this forms the basis of how we evangelize.
“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live”
In trust, we look to God Alone for our protection. As His true peace is given to us in our faithfulness to Him (Alone) via the light of the Holy Spirit which cannot be taken from us.
Note. I appear to have been locked into the same opening page since the 17th of September 2022 making it difficult to function (Follow posts etc) with ease on the Catholic World Site (Only). I have tried using another computer to no effect, is this happening to anyone else?
kevin your brother
In Christ
The train wreck pontificate keeps rolling along.
An inviolable issue is the integrity of divine revelation and the right of the Catholic Church to express it in her doctrines, liturgy, and messaging. If Sinicization per this latest Vatican China renewal omits, subverts this revelation, the agreement is an immoral capitulation.