Vatican City, Feb 3, 2018 / 01:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Several sources familiar with a proposed deal between the Chinese government and the Holy See have said the landmark agreement is not only a possibility, but an “imminent” certainty that could come to fruition as early as this spring.
While no specific timeline has been given for the agreement, “I’ve heard that it is imminent. And in China, in many areas and environments, it is already taken as a done deal,” Henry Cappello told CNA Feb. 2.
President of the “Caritas in Veritate International” organization, Cappello travels to China on a regular basis to offer training to the country’s bishops, and has strong ties with both those approved by the Holy See and those backed by the communist government’s Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.
Cappello was in China two weeks ago, where Joseph Ma Yinglin, the government-backed bishop of Kunming, explained the proposed deal to him.
Without the Vatican’s consent, Ma was tapped by the patriotic association to head the diocese in 2006. After his episcopal ordination, Ma’s excommunication was declared by the Vatican, because he was ordained a bishop without approval from Rome. In 2010 he was appointed president of the Chinese patriotic association’s bishops’ conference.
As part of the agreement, which has been widely reported in recent days, the Vatican is expected to officially recognize seven bishops who are out of communion with Rome, including 2-3 bishops, one of which is Ma, whose excommunications have been explicitly declared by the Vatican.
Cappello said the proposal has already been discussed in China, and he believes “this is the direction that things are going.”
In 1951 Beijing broke official diplomatic ties with the Vatican. Since the 1980s they have loosely cooperated in episcopal appointments, however, the government has also named bishops without Vatican approval.
The result has led to a complicated and tense relationship between the patriotic association and the “underground Church,” which includes priests and bishops who are not recognized by the government.
Many Catholics parishioners and priests who have rejected government control have been imprisoned, harassed and otherwise persecuted.
Currently every bishop recognized by Beijing must be a member of the patriotic association, and many bishops appointed by the Vatican who are not recognized or approved by the Chinese government have faced government persecution.
Many of the Vatican-approved bishops in China are drawing near to the age of 75, when they are required to submit their request for retirement, and many others have died, yet few successors have been named, raising questions as to whether or not a deal might be drawing near.
Regarding the seven bishops who will be recognized should a new agreement come to pass, Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo, who has worked with the seven bishops in question through the Caritas in Veritate for the past several years and was in China in July 2017, confirmed the news on the bishops’ proposed approval, saying “if the Vatican is going to accept them and an accord be reached, it’s going to be for all of them. ”
In addition to recognizing the seven bishops, the new deal would reportedly outline government and Vatican roles in future episcopal selection, with the Vatican proposing names and the Chinese government reportedly having the final say over Vatican-vetted candidates.
Figueiredo, who lives in Rome, travels to China several times a year with Caritas in Veritate, said he has worked closely with the seven bishops in question, and “they have desired this communion for years.”
He personally delivered a letter from the bishops to the Pope in 2016, which he says told the Pope they wanted communion with Rome.
“They didn’t propose the deal, certainly not in the letter they gave me, because that’s what’s come afterwards,” he said, noting that the Vatican has on several occasions sent a delegation to Beijing to discuss the details of a possible agreement.
Figueiredo said the deal could come within the next few months, saying “I think it could well come this spring, absolutely.”
For his part, Cappello said he could neither confirm nor deny any specific details of the agreement, but that as of two weeks ago during his visit to China, “we are talking in the right direction” in terms of what’s already been reported.
He said that in his view, to say China would have the final say in bishop appointments oversimplifies the matter, because the Church in China is complicated and nuanced due to its relations with a communist state.
“The Chinese bishops in China would have a big say, but knowing that the Church in China is in a communist nation, then the Church and the State, the line between them is very narrow,” he said.
“There’s really no black and white, there’s overlap there, so of course there would be an input from the government…it will be a collaboration,” Cappello said.
And as someone that has traveled back and forth to various provinces in China for the past 25 years, he said he has seen progress he calls remarkable, in terms of relations in the past decade, and during the past five years in particular.
With this deal, Pope Francis “is building bridges,” he said, adding that he believes the stronger and more vocal opponents of the accord “are on the wrong side of history.”
One of the most outspoken critics of a deal with the Chinese government has been Cardinal Joseph Zen, Archbishop Emeritus of Hong Kong.
Zen was ordained a priest in 1961 and became a bishop in 1996. He has spent a long missionary career in China, and has long been a vocal protester against human-rights abuses in China.
His concerns have grown so great that he recently traveled to Rome to meet with Pope Francis about the proposed deal, after the Vatican asked Bishop Peter Zhuang Jianjian of Shantou in southern Guangdong province and Bishop Joseph Guo Xijin from the Mindong Diocese of China’s eastern Fujian province to retire so that bishops from the patriotic association could take their place.
In a letter posted to his blog Jan. 29, Cardinal Zen said that while his meeting with the Pope last week was consoling, he believes “the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China…if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months.”
He implied that Francis was unfamiliar with the situation, and questioned whether there could be any mutual ground with “a totalitarian regime,” comparing this to a hypothetical agreement between St. Joseph and King Herod. He said that if the agreement that comes out is a poor one, “I would be more than happy to be the obstacle.”
The Vatican immediately responded, and in a Jan. 30 statement said Francis is well-informed of the dialogue with China, so “it is therefore surprising and regrettable that the contrary is affirmed by people in the Church, thus fostering confusion and controversy.”
In a Jan. 31 interview with Italian paper La Stampa , Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin spoke of the proposed deal, and, though he didn’t mention Zen’s comments specifically, said “no one should cling to the spirit of opposition to condemn his brother or use the past as an excuse to stir up new resentments and closures.”
On the deal, he said that “if someone is asked to make a sacrifice, small or great, it must be clear to everyone that this is not the price of a political exchange, but falls within the evangelical perspective of a greater good, the good of the Church of Christ”
Figueriedo told CNA he believes the Vatican was quick to counter Zen in order to protect the deal, because “it really takes just one person on the Chinese side to say ‘you shouldn’t go ahead,’” which he says has happened in the past.
Should a deal come to fruition, Cappello said he hoped it would help normalize life for Catholic faithful and allow priests, bishops and seminarians to receive much needed formation.
China is extremely complex, he said, explaining that the Vatican has reached a point of understanding the nation which is both “encouraging and remarkable.”
However, he said there are real reasons for concern based on past events, and that any agreement is something that those on both sides will need to grow into.
CNA reached out to the Vatican for confirmation, however, they declined to comment on the situation.
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With the lead-in picture of the ring hand, reminds me of the “diamonds are forever” jingle; often seems more of a fantasy with earthly marriages.
“We cannot reduce a human situation to a prescriptive one” [Francis] translates the Roman Pontiff does not want the Church to be constricted by [to adhere to] doctrine. Whether Benedict XVI expressed an opinion [neither is an opinion a proscription] that a given number of marriages are invalid due to lack of faith that cannot be made an assumption that every divorced and remarried outside the Church falls into that category. If we accept that assumption on invalidity [Benedict’s alleged opinion] as a standard for judgment then that doubt must be presumed for all.
Pope Francis immediately after publication of Amoris Laetitia announced that most presumed sacramental marriages are invalid. Then walked it back following the expected uproar. That has been his gradual process of seeking to modify doctrine. Timing is essential.
A person unless retarded knows what an affirmation is [when exchanging vows]. If they don’t [due to lack of faith] they will likely remain as oblivious even if after a similar process of instruction they’re conferred the Holy Eucharist. Based on these premises this new document on divorced and remarried may well be footnote 351 on steroids.
Card Kevin Farrell, McCarrick associate when assigned to DC is one of the fast rising stars selected by His Holiness to complete the large tent Church renovation. Numbers versus quality, secular religiosity versus adherence to revelation. Unless I’m wrong and happily surprised.
“…without an annulment.” The easy-annulment mentality of the last fifty years has in effect amounted to being a Church endorsement for divorce. Oh, but annulments are NOT Catholic divorce, said Bishop James Conley in the Denver Catholic newspaper a decade ago or so. Sorry, bishop. they really are, in every way but officially. And every time the Church grants an annulment, it guarantees that there will be many more — the annulment mentality is part of the Church now. Thank you, New Springtime of Vatican II.
Yes!
This document like so many others emanating from this pontificate are DOA.
Excerpt: Pope Francis said. “When young people say ‘forever,’ who knows what they mean [by] ‘forever.’”
It is not just YOUNG people. My new wife and her maniacal first husband were divorced since she could no longer deal with his bipolar disorder. He died before I met Gail. I am a widower who lost my first wife at age 42. For 13 years I was single and alone. Then I met Gail and after a year we decided to get married. We were deeply in love and planned a lifetime together. That was when we experienced the harshness Catholic Church. Our parish priest would not marry us because Gail was divorced without an annulment. The fact that her first husband was now dead meant little. Across from St. Josephs was the Old Dutch Church where my friend Rev Paul Bennis was rector. After several “pre-cana” sessions he married us. We returned to St. Josephs, but were not given the Host. We have settled in and look forward to a long life.
When people get married, they are no longer free to take another partner, in other words, they are “reserved”. When Gail’s husband died, she was no longer “reserved”, and was free to marry for a second man. As for her civil divorce, I don’t know if she incurred any censure or canonical penalty. The remedy would have been a good confession with a knowledgeable priest. How could her parish priest refuse to marry her to a single man, and then refuse her Communion? As recounted by morganD, it seems altogether a bad decision. Another question: where was her bishop?
Marriage ends at death. It is unbelievable that a priest would claim a woman is not free to marry after for the sole reason that she is already married to a dead man.
“Practice continence within their marriage”??? Really?? Excuse me while i roll on the floor laughing. Who on earth does that?? There are a few anecdotal stories of some saintly couples in the long past supposedly doing that. But certainly that is beyond rare. Expect the report to approve of more secular practices for the divorced and remarried. To be kind and merciful of course, which appears to now trump standards if amy kind. And if the Pope assumes most catholic marriages are invalid, dispense with marriage as a sacrament and call in a govt justice of the peace. People are not improved when LESS is expected of them. Is the request for this report the popes way of distracting attention from the results of the recent German synod??? I think the tesults of this report will be sadly predictable.
Marriage is about the procreation and education of children for heaven. But in 1969, Rotal Judge Lucian Anne (accent over the “e”) proclaimed that from then on it was about much more as in a partnership of the whole of life.
But there is no list of how this partnership is defined. Couples can violate it in ignorance; only tribunal judges know how to find evidence that invalidates their marriage under, almost always, canon 1095.2 and 1095.3.
American diocesan marriage tribunals are corrupt. Ask those children who cried themselves to sleep for years, only wanting Mom and Dad back together. And the ” church” let them down again and again.
Using marriage as an indicator of anything relevant to the Church is useless. Casual sex, cohabiting, exploitation of children are rampant, and the wedding ceremony itself is given far more effort than the actual marriage. The truth is that the only one who can police Communion is Christ Himself.
I look forward to the day the Church implements our existing canon law and doctrine about those “having a failed marriage behind them.” The Church, not the government, has competence to decide spouses’ obligations toward each other and their children. No-fault divorce is virtually illegal for Catholics who are bound to follow canon law. For every so-called failed marriage there is one person (or two) who chose to break marriage promises by abandonment, abuse, or adultery. See my blog https://marysadvocates.org/please-stop-saying-those-who-experience-divorce/
Thank you for that post. My wife walked out of our marriage with no effort, no care, no apology, no remorse. She had committed adultery for several years and left for the other man. I would have done anything to save my marriage and took my vows seriously. She did not. Now I suffer as do my adult children.
70 testimonies of adult children of divorce is a must read in Primal Loss by Leila Miller for all clergy and lay Catholic counselors
I have so many questions about this. I was Catholic for almost 20 years, a convert as an adult. My first marriage was not in the church and he was abusive. My priest basically told me to leave him or I might die and he didn’t want to preach my funeral mass. I did, and we divorced. I got married again, once again not in the Church and we were married for 10 years. I had left the Church due to the marriage thing. After the 10 years, he announced he never loved me and he was in love with another woman and basically threw me out. I moved 800 miles away to my sister’s and went to the local church to talk about this and what to do about coming back. That priest told me to go home, throw her out, and tell my husband he had to stay with me. Uh, not happening, and I walked away from the church again.
A year and a half later I met a man who was perfect for me. We were in a whirlwind romance and after doing a handfasting with friends, got the JP ceremony. That was 30 years ago and we’re happier than we’ve ever been. He was divorced too, just getting over it. We worked through the baggage from our pasts and we have grown into a really comfortable, loving marriage.
Now I’m feeling the call to go home to the Church. I keep reading I have to get annulments, I have to live like “brother and sister” with my beloved husband while that’s going on. My first husband is dead, I’ve not had contact with the other one in about six years (at a wedding for our daughter). I don’t know what to do about this whole thing. If I can’t have sacraments, why go back? I can pray at home, I can read on my own. I can watch mass online.
My husband wouldn’t be adverse to conversion, depending on how he finds things. He grew up Methodist, very active since he played piano for the church and his father was a deacon and a lay minister. He has said he will accompany me to mass if I wanted to go.
So, when the Church talks about having to annul a marriage, if you’ve never been married in the Church, is that still valid? I’m very convused.