Vatican City, Mar 28, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- If Vatican-brokered agreements negotiated under his leadership are any indication, it seems clear that when a deal is on the table, Pope Francis usually tries to take it.
In Colombia, with the U.S. and Cuba, and in China, it seems that Francis generally prefers to take an imperfect patch job that might at least begin to restore broken ties, even if it faces opposition, rather than waiting for perfect diplomatic agreement to arise.
A clear example of this is the Vatican’s pending agreement with China on the appointment of bishops, which many sources, including the Vatican’s own Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, have said is “imminent.”
In negotiations with China, the Vatican is reportedly using an approach similar to the one that led to a 1996 accord Parolin brokered with Vietnam. In China, the Holy See would apparently have the final say in appointing bishops, choosing from a selection of candidates put forward by the government-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the legally recognized Catholic body in the nation.
The proposal has been harshly criticized by some, including Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen. However, many, including Zen’s successor Cardinal John Tong Hon, himself also Emeritus Bishop of Hong Kong, have supported an accord, saying the situation for religion in China has generally improved, and that while there might be problems in some areas, China is a large nation, and incidents of arrest or imprisonment are generally rare and limited to certain regions.
Similar conversations happened when the Vatican helped the Colombian government and leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) reach a peace agreement in September 2016, intended to an end five decades of violent armed conflict that left some 260,000 people dead and millions displaced.
The Vatican helped to broker the agreement, which allowed the incorporation of some FARC leaders into the government, in exchange for the group’s disarmament and renunciation of kidnapping and drug trafficking.
The deal marked a breakthrough in what had been a long-time stalemate in which neither side was willing to budge.
However, it was met with mixed reactions from Colombian citizens and Church leaders, with some priests, bishops, and cardinals voicing dissatisfaction, arguing that the deal’s stipulations were too lenient on the guerrilla fighters.
Though voters rejected the deal in an October 2016 referendum, the Colombian government and FARC renegotiated its terms, implementing a plan in November 2016. Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos Calderón was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the peace process.
Despite debate on the ground, Cardinal Parolin traveled to Colombia for the official signing of the accord in a show of support, and in September 2017 Pope Francis visited Colombia himself, making a 6-day trip to the South American nation to recognize steps made in the peace process.
The peace deal remains controversial, and critics note that 250 activists and political leaders have been murdered in Colombia since the agreement was struck. But there remain opportunities to build on the groundwork laid by the accord.
Francis was also an active player in helping broker the 2015 restoration of ties between the United States and Cuba, bringing an end to a freeze in diplomatic relations severed in 1961.
Secret talks between diplomats from each side began in 2013, and were aided by support from the Vatican.
The Vatican’s role was largely unknown until the process had already been mostly formalized, but the Vatican’s role in helping broker the deal was significant.
Francis showed just how invested the Holy See was in restoring relations between the two nations that he added a stop in Cuba ahead of his visit to the United States in September 2015.
For the China deal currently being discussed, the biggest concern is how much religious freedom Catholics will actually have if it’s signed and implemented.
Opponents such as Cardinal Zen have questioned whether it’s possible to have genuine dialogue with the Chinese government, and whether Beijing will in fact allow Catholics to have a longer leash should a deal come to fruition.
However, others, such as Cardinal Tong, have argued that China is a large country where incidents of arrests or imprisonments are largely isolated to certain areas.
Cardinal Zen has often said that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” and in a recent blog-post called the proposal an act of “suicide” and a “shameless surrender” to the communist government.
On the other hand, in an interview with CNA last week, Cardinal Tong said opposing the deal was “unreasonable.” He argued that the Chinese government has generally become more tolerant, and called the deal “far-sighted,” saying that at times, sacrifice is necessary in order for Catholics to become “members of one family.”
Compounding the debate is yesterday’s arrest of Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin of Mindong, who is recognized by the Vatican but not the government, and who was taken into custody by police alongside the diocesan chancellor. He was held overnight but was later released, and was barred from celebrating any Mass as a bishop, including Holy Week liturgies.
According to Asia News, Guo was detained for refusing to concelebrate this week’s Chrism Mass with Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu, one of seven illicit bishops backed by the Chinese government.
Asia News reports that after refusing to concelebrate the Chrism Mass with Zhan, Guo organized a separate, earlier Chrism Mass for the “underground” faithful in Mindong, who form the majority of the local Church, and was seized in order to prevent him from moving forward with the liturgy.
In January, Asia News reported that a Vatican delegation asked Bishop Guo voluntarily to accept a position as auxiliary bishop, serving under Bishop Zhan. The request was made as one of the conditions of an eventual agreement between the Vatican and the Chinese government.
Details or an official timeline for a deal in China have not been made public, and no declaration has been made on the seven illicit bishop, meaning that for the moment, they are still excommunicated. Under the terms of the proposed deal, the Vatican would reportedly regularize each of the seven illicit bishops, bringing them into communion with Rome.
Though it is unknown what impact, if any, Guo’s overnight detainment will have on an agreement between China and the Vatican, many who are close to the situation, including Cardinal Parolin, have in recent weeks said things are moving forward, and it may only be a matter of months before a deal is made.
Cardinal Zen recently met with Pope Francis during a last-minute trip to Rome in January, after Guo and another bishop were asked to step down in favor of bishops backed by the Chinese government.
Francis’ willingness to meet with Cardinal Zen, just as he met with many Colombian prelates ahead of the 2016 peace deal, some of whom shared reservations, indicates that he is willing to hear out other perspectives on these matters, and talk things through, even if he chooses to move forward anyway.
So while a deal with China, if it is made, will certainly be met with mixed reactions, one thing is certain: there is likely not much that will stop Francis from going after it, so long as he sees the potential of real change for the better.
For Francis, something is always better than nothing, and if there’s a shot, even with problems unresolved, he prefers to try. Whether this approach bears good fruit or not, we can probably expect to Francis to have a similar approach moving forward.
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So what was once the Synod of Bishops will now be Synods of Bishops, Priests, Sisters, Car Salesmen, Teachers, Financial Advisors, HR Directors, Assistant Principals, Cashiers and Truck Drivers…
Remind me. Is this the Catholic Church we’re talking about, or the Rotary Club?
Agreed brineyman. Synodaling is not Catholic. Synodaling abuses the God-given authority of the hierarchy to destroy the God-given authority of the hierarchy. As such, Synodaling is a suicidal form of clericalism.
Synodal Superlodge.
Indeed. But why so negative?
After all, the geographic “contexts” of new-layer regional and continental bureaucracies will surely polyhedralize the merely diocesan bishops who, however, are a higher kind of “context” as successors of the Apostles.
But, still, “we” might converge globally on a very unifying theological question. And even a Q & A query updated from the rigid Baltimore Catechism…That is:…who the hell are all these people, and “from whence have they come and whither are they synodalling?”
Mark Twain held that the only folks justified in using the editorial “we” are newspaper editors and people with tapeworms.
You forgot the person in the pew. What the heck! They have opinions too I just came from a Mass where the choristers occupied the major pert of what used to be the Sanctuary and gave us virtually non-stop pop entertainment. The Eucharist was in a niche on the side altar. Attendees passed within five feet of the tabernacle. Not one person genuflected of even nodded their head. The applause and cheering at the end was huge. It was the last regular performance in a Parish that is closing. Not enough priests or regular Parishioners to keep it going. I wonder why.
what state or country, if you don’t mind?
Baltimore, MD is the site. They are shuttering some 30+ parishes in the City. The Church I was in will now have a Mass on a rotating basis with about 6 others. I raised my family around that Parish for nearly 50 years. All my children went to the school. The Whoopie Mass I attended would have been unintelligible back then. Demographic change is a part of the Parish problems/issues, but a ‘modern Protestantish worship’ service overlaying the ‘new’ liturgy surely cant help.
Bernard, that blasphemous mockery of the mass was perhaps your last? We all have a breaking point at which we seek Traditional Latin Mass and wonder why we waited so long…
When Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury (ca. 1533) and the chief architect of the nascent Anglican Church he forced worshipers to receive Communion in the hand and he hoped thereby to destroy belief in the Real Presence in one generation. (see The Life of Newman by Velez). It is about one generation since the practice began in today’s Catholic Church. Enough said.
That wouldn’t be as bad as inclusiveness including the unrepentant traffikers, drug dealers, pimps, abortionists, depraved theologians, and corrupt politicians, oh, sorry, I already said pimps.
We read: “The pontiff added that the general secretariat of the synod and the Vatican’s dicasteries will assist him in this task [‘listening, convening, discerning, deciding, and evaluating’].”
With due and genuine respect in these complex times, this is a most challenging next task—now from the focus group recommendations—to precisely lift out the baby, yes, from the bathwater, also yes, so as to not contradict other elements of the existing ordinary Magisterium.
Recalling in another and interreligious context that it’s only an Islamic principle to actually “abrogate” what came before by what comes afterward. Listening, too, to the Catholic layman St. Thomas More, speaking in yet another context only of king’s and laity: “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it?”
That “quote” is from A Man For All Seasons, and not actually from St. Thomas More. There is no question whatsoever (based upon overwhelming scholarly evidence) that in the entire West during his era, and even the two millennia preceding his time, that the roundness of the Earth was common and universally-accepted everyday knowledge as understood by all of society. Since the opposite claim (which is pure nonsense) is so commonly mobilized for anti-Catholic historical propaganda purposes today (“stupid backwards Medieval Catholics”), I just wanted to get that out there.
Yes, Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” 1960). Also, this, possibly referring today to a few heroic backwardists:
“If we lived in a State [etc.] where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all…why then perhaps we must stand fast a little–even at the risk of heroes.”
Well, my deed will be to conclude this was all a fraudulent waste of time and money.
My opinion of this Vatican can’t get much lower. Sad.
But like all communist governments, the Vatican will declare it a great success.
Thank God it’s over. The People of God can now attend to their collective headache which this papacy has no difficulty at all provoking.
The choices of the Pontiff Francis and his “synod-cultists-of-apostasy-and-queer-neo-pagan-Rupnik-abuser-church” do not involve the whole Church, they pertain only to their own hermetically sealed cult.
I am not as optimistic. Although the authors of the document (which I forced myself to read in its entirety) refer to the Vatican II and make themselves its heirs, to me they are the heirs of the so-called “spirit of the Vatican II” about which pope Benedict discoursed in his ‘Milestones’. He wrote with a palpable astonishment about what was going on: a theological madness, triumphant denial of an apostolic tradition, destruction of beauty, chaos in minds – in a word, a phenomenon which he and his collaborators had never envisaged. I will add to this a disregard of “people of God” under the mask of doing it for them (this is what is happening now as well). I truly believe that what we have now is a legalization of that “Vatican II spirit” and nothing else. If before one could try to appeal to a tradition, Church’s life as it was before now it is impossible because only “synodality” matters. And anyone can call “synodality” anything he wants, as long as it fits into a general vague agenda of a mutual petting of the ego. Being stripped of all verbal fluff, “synodality” boils down to a motto “if you see me as nice, I will see you as nice and will glorify you and you will glorify me”. It is easy to see that God (who is to be adored and glorified) must go because He is in the way of the cult of self-adoration.
Thus, the whole thing is very insidious and very far from being “sealed”. “The things” will find a response in people’s ego and will go on. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for improving interpersonal relationships within the Church (Rupnik’s case being a symbol of wrong models of interpersonal relationships), throwing away misogyny or any disrespect of others but it is not what is happening. Paradoxically, they throw away the only measure which can help in that, Jesus Christ. You are against misogyny? – Good on you, write an encyclical which is drawn on how Our Lord had dealt with women. Make theological-psychological treatise and oblige all to implement it, in their own minds and parishes. Make study groups. I am sure it is done, there will be no need to throw in populist “empowering women” whatever.
Anna –
You are certainly correct about my words saying that “Pontiff Francis and his synod-cult” are “hemertically sealed.” That was poorly stated by me.
And I, like you, see no reason to be optimistic about the faithfulness of the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. I believe that the intention of most of the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., the Pontiff Francis, and it seems most Cardinals and Bishops and “Team-Francis-celebrities” I can observe in Europe, North America and South America) is to apostasize and de-capitate the Body of Christ (I am using the decapitation metaphor employed by Fr. Robert Imbelli).
I guess the only thing I can say is that I am not an apostate, and that since they are, they are excommunicating themselves from the Body of Christ. Where that leaves people like me (and you and others) is I guess where the men and women of the Ordinariate are: they have not apostasized, but their Church, the Church of England, has already formally apostasized, and they (the Ordinariate) are the dwindling remnant of the faithful who sought refuge in the CAtholic Church under Pope Benedict XVI.
My only hope is in the one who desrves our hope: Christ our King. And my only communion is with those who worship and obey and profess him as the head of his Church, the Body of Christ.
Chris, I share your position fully.
Years ago I began noticing the utmost banality in what was happening so the words “the banality of evil” kept popping up in my mind.
What can be more banal (and absurd) than swapping theosis (man to become God, to be with Christ in love) with an inflated reflection of oneself in a narcissistic mirror held by others, a pathetic attempt to become a little god! The New Banal Church is, in essence, a place where each person holds a flattering mirror for the other and vice versa endlessly; altogether they create a maze of reflections, an endless corridor in which they “journey” in perfect “mutuality”. Those reflections merge and this is their “unity” which exists only in a mirror, instead of true unity via Christ.
Even when I was an atheist in my youth, who did not identify with the concept of sin, I still recognized personal evil, which is self-evidently self-worship. It was a mystery to me that the religious people I met did not seem to grasp such an easy concept. I realized their “religion” had to have declined to a place of systematically reinforced disassociation from the principles they claimed.
Thank you Anna.
Among the petitions of the Anima Christi, one resounds in these days: “Passion of Christ…strengthen me.”
The Holy Spirit strengthen you, and me, and all of us, as one Body, with the mind and heart of Christ our King.
Anna, There are a great many astute comments posted here at CWR.
Congratulations on posting one of the all time best.
The “spirit of Vatican 2” is often an excuse to not really knowing and doing the truth of Vatican 2 – and often rejecting the latter out of a genuine caution towards “fundamentalism.’ The Democrats often attempt to not follow the Constitution by appealing to doing the “spirit of the Constitution” as well for the same reasons. And so the pendulum swings too far towards “spirit.” How about we do both the spirit of Vatican 2 and the substance of Vatican 2, but if the spirit contradicts the substance, let go of one’s interpretation of “spirit” because we could be following the wrong spirit. Forget pendulum swinging. We are supposed to walk the middle path.
Dear Fred
I think you’ll find the term “Freemasonic Spirit of Vatican II” explains everything.
Kind regards
Mr C.N.
Yeah, that’s right up there with “Babylonian mysticism”. Sigh.
Which is it?
“I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.””
“…guide for the mission of the Churches, on the different continents, in the different contexts…”
As the Ordinary Magisterium exercised absent of agreement with pontiff and bishops on a definitive teaching of faith and morals – in this instance it’s not infallible. As Francis says the final document is a guide.
Nevertheless the pronouncement by Pope Francis appears to give the bishops and lay participants an independence in development of guidelines that potentially become doctrine. Whether doctrine can be developed independently of the Roman pontiff and the universal body of bishops [referring to bishops and cardinals who are not participants] is problematic.
A sure sign of intelligence is simple profundity.
So what were once Synods of Bishops will now be Synods of Bishops, Priests, Sisters, Car Salesmen, Teachers, Financial Advisors, HR Directors, Assistant Principals, Cashiers and Truck Drivers…
Remind me. Is this the Catholic Church we’re talking about, or the Rotary Club?
Reform? In what sense? To correct error and sin, or to “re form” into a new entity? Whatever their intent understand “reform” as further mutilation.
These theatrics have no credence.
James, always in delighted agreement with your very succinct comments.
But, eh, about reform and the “new entity,” why be so non-inclusive? If one were to fumigate the termite-infested sectors of the Vatican, surely multiple new infestations would spring up in each of the substitute continental assemblies or entities (plural).
If these up-to-seven mixed-company town hall meetings ever presume synodally to be more than what they are, why surely you could agree that even this polyhedral outcome is still biblical…
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits [!] more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation” (Mt 12:43-45).
QUESTION: Like the Synod on Synodality, now will the “hot-button” study groups also offload their hot-potato themes, geographically?
We are all Protestants now
Am I allowed to protest that comment?
How so are we all Protestants? I am a Catholic who accepts that the Pope is Francis. Pope Francis says make a mess. I say Synodaling is a suicidal form of clericalism. Is that opinion messy enough in your opinion for you to agree that I am being a faithful Catholic?
Note that I never commented during previous pontificates. Should the next Pope return us to clarity on matters of Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and should said Pope ask us to refrain from making a mess, I will gladly cease throwing peanut shells from the upper gallery.
Dear Fool!
Your comments from the peanut gallery are the silver lining of this Synodolytrous Bergoglian fiasco! (Am I right in thinking that “fiasco” is an Italian word?)
And they are amusing enough that I cannot honestly say that I wish there had never been a Bergoglian papacy.
Glad we are together in the peanut gallery. My understanding is that fiasco is the Italian word for flask or wine bottle from medieval Latin. Perhaps the Bergoglio family made wine bottles long ago in Italy? The Asti region where they are from is known for wine. 🍷 So maybe this is how we are supposed to make a mess?
Wikipedia adds to your definition: A fiasco (/fiˈæskoʊ/, Italian: [ˈfjasko]; pl.: fiaschi) is a traditional Italian style of bottle, usually with a round body and bottom, partially or completely covered with a close-fitting straw basket. The basket is typically made of sala, a swamp weed, sun-dried and blanched with sulfur. The basket provides protection during transportation and handling, and also a flat base for the container. Thus the glass bottle can have a round bottom, which is much simpler to make by glassblowing.[1] Fiaschi can be efficiently packed for transport, with the necks of inverted bottles safely tucked into the spaces between the baskets of upright ones.
Note the basket is made from SWAMP WEED, blanched with sulfur. Now we know the origin of the bad smell.
Exercising his atheistic mind as he does affects crimes against humanity. Not a laughing matter. And can a criminal pope retain the papacy?
God’s Fool,
Actually is quite a mess to say that “the Pope is Francis;” the different and less autocratic expression is that “Francis is the Pope.” Hence, the mess of the so-called Francis Magisterium.
As a forwardist, making my own little mess in the year 11 AF, I prefer to acknowledge the illustrious messy autocracy of the personal magisterium of Francis.
Distinctions are so BF (Before Francis).
Happy Halloween!