Vatican City, Sep 17, 2018 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Following reports that the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China could be about to sign an agreement on the appointment of bishops in the country, attention has turned to the role of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick in fostering Vatican-China relations over the last two decades.
Over 20 years, Archbishop McCarrick traveled to China on at least eight occasions, sometimes staying in a state-controlled Beijing seminary, often serving as an unofficial bridge between the Vatican and Chinese government-appointed bishops until 2016.
Prior to allegations of sexual abuse and harassment becoming public this summer, the former cardinal had been an outspoken proponent of a deal between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Church under Pope Francis, according to Chinese reports.
“I see a lot of things happening that would really open many doors because President Xi and his government are concerned about things that Pope Francis is concerned about,” McCarrick told The Global Times, in an exclusive interview in Feb. 2016.
The interview quoted McCarrick as saying that the similarities between Pope Francis and Xi Jinping could be “a special gift for the world.”
The the state-approved Chinese newspaper also reported that McCarrick traveled to China in Feb. 2016 — “a trip in which the cardinal said he would visit some ‘old friends.’”
“His previous visits included meetings with Wang Zuo’an, head of the State Administration for Religious Affairs and late bishop Fu Tieshan, former president of Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC), an organization not recognized by the Holy See,” The Global Times reported.
In June 2014, David Gibson reported in the Washington Post that McCarrick had traveled to China “in the past year” for “sensitive talks on religious freedom.”
This detail aligns, in part, with the 11-page “testimony” of former apostolic nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Viganò recounted a meeting with McCarrick in June 2013, during which Vigano claims he was told by McCarrick, “The pope received me yesterday, tomorrow I am going to China.”
McCarrick was hosted by the Beijing seminary during at least two trips to China, according to a 2006 State Department document made available via Wikileaks.
The vice-rector of a Communist-approved seminary, Fr. Shu-Jie Chen, described twice hosting McCarrick in an account found in a cable from Christopher Sandrolini, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.
Chen described himself as “king” of the seminary, saying that he “could do what he wanted within its walls.”
Sandrolini also noted that the vice rector “downplayed persecution of the underground Church,” calling the underground church “uneducated” and “elderly.” He said that Chen seemed “unconcerned” that “evangelization was not an option for official religious personnel.
A cable from U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Francis Rooney in March 2006 noted that Archbishop Claudio Celli, who was at that time the Holy See’s principal China negotiator, insisted that McCarrick was not in a position to negotiate with China and that his visits to China were “unofficial.”
There appears to be a gap between McCarrick’s trips to China between 2006 and 2013, though McCarrick’s influence was still active.
In 2009, the archbishop had a message relayed to a friend in China through Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives. Pelosi conveyed McCarrick’s greetings to Bishop Aloysius Jin of Shanghai, formerly a leading Chinese Jesuit.
“She [Pelosi] relayed Cardinal McCarrick’s good wishes to Bishop Jin. Bishop Jin said he and Cardinal McCarrick had exchanged visits, beginning when the latter was Bishop of Newark,” the State Department cable reads.
During McCarrick’s time as Archbishop of Newark, Aloysius Jin Luxian was not recognized as a bishop by the Vatican. He was ordained a coadjutor bishop of Shanghai without papal approval in 1985, his position was not recognized by the Vatican until 2004. Bishop Jin died in 2013.
A 2007 article in The Atlantic described the close friendship between McCarrick and Jin, and how McCarrick claimed to have relayed messages from the Chinese government-appointed bishop to the pope in the 1990s.
Both the State Department and Chinese media recorded a 1998 visit to China by Archbishop McCarrick. On that trip he was one of three American clerics to visit China to discuss religious freedom, meeting with Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan, vice-chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s Standing Committee of the Chinese National People’s Congress.
Fu was made a bishop by Beijing 1979 without approval of the pope.
Chinese media reported that McCarrick paid a visit to the National Seminary in Beijing in 1998.
In Aug. 2, 2003, the South China Morning Post reported that McCarrick “spent three days in Beijing earlier this week on what was ostensibly a private visit.”
McCarrick was “the first cardinal from a western country to visit the mainland since relations between China and the Vatican turned frosty after a dispute over canonisation in October 2000,” the article continued.
In a Dec. 2003 State Department cable, U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Jim Nicholson wrote that Vatican Office Director for China Monsignor Gianfranco Rota-Graziosi “did not expect concrete improvement stemming from the informal trip last summer of Washington Cardinal McCarrick to China.”
On Sept. 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Holy See could be about to enter a deal with China which would include the recognition of seven illicitly consecrated bishops serving in the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association – a state-sponsored form of Catholicism whose leaders are chosen by Communist authorities.
Reports of the Holy See and Chinese government working towards a formal agreement on the appointment of bishops have been circulating since January, 2018. At the same time, China has launched an increasing crackdown on religious practice in the country, demolishing churches and harassing worshippers.
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What? More?
Too much of an echo chamber for the illuminati? Three comments and a question:
FIRST, the synodal style, by itself, is something for the next conclave to think about, twice. In 2028 Cardinal Grech might even be awarded two minutes to say his piece. One key innovation, here, is “consensus,” and we ask, “consensus about what”? A second devolution is the meaning of the word “alongside.” As successors of the Apostles (apostello: “sent”), the ordained bishops are firstly the guardians of the Deposit of Faith, which is our institutional, charismatic, sacramental, and personal incorporation into the life of Jesus Christ (the Mystical Body of Christ).
SECOND, yes, to some credible process to get the ordained clergy and the laity to support and leaven each other within the “universal call to holiness.” But, what still of Vatican II—which Grech mentions—which retains clarity about the vital “difference in kind as well as degree” (Lumen Gentium). Also a distinction between the realm of Revelation (Dei Verbum) and the realm of the world (Gaudium et Spes).
THIRD, so, in the full text of this initiative (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2025-03/grech-a-new-path-to-help-the-church-walk-in-a-synodal-style.html), why are the terms “Synod” (of Bishops) and “Assembly” used interchangeably? In a deeper way, the presence of the entire Communion of Saints (!) already happens at each celebration of the Mass—as an “extension and continuation” (St. John Paul II, drawing from St. John Chrysostom) of the one event of Calvary. The center of universal human history; not simply an episode within one narrative among many.
So, yes, to reinvigorating a religious and therefore fully human alternative to a post-World War II, post-modern, and flat-earth world moving backward into global spheres of influence. But, alone, the synodal “style” does not replace content. This by procedurally substituting (?) the vertical altar with horizontal roundtables of various sizes.
QUESTION: What does the synodal “style” have to offer to what is, in fact, a new Apostolic Age?
By then we will have a different Pope and this “Synodality” nonsense would have been tossed into the trash can of history and forgotten, where it belongs.
Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help. When his breath departs he returns to his earth; on that very day his plans perish.
If not before. Most sons of men have their plans perish long before they die. If the plans happen to persist after the death of the planner, it is only because someone else made it his plan. (John Kennedy had less to do with the moon landing than he is usually credited.)
The question, then, is whether the new pope will take up Francis’s plans. That, of course, is completely unknowable. Many people point to the number of cardinals Francis has appointed, but ALL of the cardinals who elected Francis had been appointed either by Benedict XVI or by John Paul II. As we see, this did not guarantee the election of a like-minded pope. Even so, it is by no means certain that the next pope will change even the most obviously disastrous aspects of Francis’s papacy.
Team Francis, Cdls Grech, Hollerich, Cupich, Farrell, Roche, Tobin, how can we neglect McElroy are pressing forward despite hopeful expectations of the more traditional Catholic. 2028. The Synodal Church sails on regardless of passenger recalcitrance, disenchantment and turmoil.
Where does she sail? Paradise Island. A dreamy place where the brutality of rigorist legalism doesn’t exist. Where good is evil and evil is good. Didn’t Zoroaster foretell the day? A truly happy place in the minds of the enlightened progressives freed from tradition. That insufferable past.
Perchance Leviathan [wasn’t the bronze serpent an effigy?] himself will providentially wreck her, the survivors a new beginning.
“The brutality of legalism doesn’t exist …” except if we need it to enforce the synodal dance. After all, as Cardinal Grech reminded us, this is an expression of “the ordinary Magisterium.” And if a cleric said it, it must be true. Expect this process to be somewhat like the Vatican’s survey last summer: we want to “hear” you until what you start to say is not what we want to hear.
So when are we supposed to stop Synodaling and share the Word of God with someone else?
“Putting away falsehood, let every one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”
(Ephesians 4:25)
Idiots.
O Lord, when will this affliction of walking talking and ending up actually doing and producing NOTHING will end!!!!!!
The church is being manipulated from the top.
I’m hoping that by 2028 the Synod on Synodality will be a vague memory that only about two or three Catholics will remember with embarrassment, if he or she is unfortunate to remember it at all.
Malice in Wonderland
Hilarious!!!
And perfect..,
How best to manage the worldwide Church? Circular roundtables of layered synodality (local, national, continental)?
Two comments and a question:
FIRST, a thought experiment…what if in 2025 we are tutored by the inner circle that the Council of Nicaea (1700th anniversary) was really in management of inclusion, rather than a recalling of what was/is believed from the beginning and, therefore, a rejection (non-inclusion!) of Arianism (read Pachamama, Fiducia Supplicans, etc.)? AND, then in 2026 or so, we read that the protocol for electing a subsequent pope is modernized to involve, in some way, the advice or even consent of the 2028 Assembly.
SECOND, about management of such a community-based (or Lutheran) remodel of the ecclesial Catholic Church of the Apostolic Succession (with a validly ordained priesthood and stuff like that), clearly rooted in Matthew (28:19) and in Pentecost (Acts 2:1-31)—“listening” to Benedict XVI we hear that the message is not to “turn back”, but rather “to return to the authentic texts of the original Vatican II” (The Ratzinger Report, 1985):
“But the Church of Christ is not a party, not an association, not a club. Not setting the clock back, but setting in right. Her deep and permanent structure is not democratic but sacramental, consequently hierarchical” (49). “Real reform is to strive to let what is ours disappear as much as possible so what belongs to Christ may become more visible…what the Church needs in order to respond to the needs of man in every age is holiness, not management” (53).
QUESTION: Does the replacement of Synods of Bishops with mongrel-democratic Synodality teach/imply/ signal and morph that the process of management IS holiness?
What, exactly, about the post-synodal Study Group #9 possibly anguishing over how to elevate today’s theologians and maybe an Assembly above the Church’s magisterium(?)—that is, assigned to develop “Theological criteria [?] and synodal methodologies [?] for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal [?], pastoral [?], and ethical [?] issues.”
My walk toward Christ is full of failures. My desire has been to follow him, but I fall short of that on a daily basis. I take the responsibility of sharing the message of the Good News with my neighbors seriously. I firmly believe that the role of the Church is to be the bridge between Good and all of humanity. The Church is supposed to serve as community to unite believers as one body in Christ. She is the beacon that clearly, without hesitation and full of clarity, announces the teachings of Christ to the world.
Anything, any movement, any teaching that attempts to move the Church from her purpose is heretical and must be cast out. In my weakness, I strive to walk in truth. I am not in a position, and I am unworthy to condemn another, but I know Jesus Christ and choose to walk with him. I ignore everything else.
Amen brother! You’re for sure on the right road.
YADA YADA YADA!!
BLAH BLAH BLAH!!
FURTHERMORE – asxovvnddiuertn434&&9999v330fgjv..!!
AND THIS TIME – I MEAN IT!!!
LOL, I can’t help but agree
Sounds like you’re all ready for the Jubilee of Synodal Teams!
The Synod was a “meeting about meeting” we were told. I guess the post-Synodal Synod will be a meeting about meeting about meeting. Just think of it this way: it’s the Vatican’s version of Festivus.
Serious question. Has a single parish made a single change because of the Synod?
Ours has not, not that I can tell
“The goal is not to add work upon work but to help Churches walk in the Synodal style” according to Cardinal Grech.
Help Churches walk in the synodal style. Hmm… that sounds eerily like “I’m from the Federal Government and I’m here to help.” More to the point, the 2028 Synod will be where the teeth come out to “help Churches walk in the Synodal style.” Well, that could prove problematic for Churches faithful to Tradition that exhibit bureaucratic resistance to walking in the Synodal style.
It is my prayer that Mssrs. Johann du Toit and Ken T are correct in their prediction that post-Francis, synodalism will be discarded. I am not so optimistic. I fear that 2028 will be the beginning of the final crackdown. The Church of Accompaniment directing us to accompany together into the cattle car taking us to banquet of rotten fruit compliments of the Synodal Way.