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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A supportive side note about this year’s Jubilee of Hope–and the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea….
It’s a good time to recall both our encounter with the irreducible nature of the Trinitarian God and the irreducible nature of ourselves as Man as totally united and embodied souls. So, three incarnational thoughts, and a Question:
FIRST, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger gave us this several decades ago in “Introduction to Christianity”:
“For the Christian, the interplay of faith and reason is most evident in the doctrine that a Trinitarian God is revealed by a definitive encounter with Christ in human history. The doctrine of the Trinity did not arise out of speculation about God, out of an attempt by philosophical thinking to figure out what the fount of all being was like; it developed out of the effort to digest historical experiences [an event]…”
SECOND, now, 2025 years after that singular event—and 1700 years after Nicaea, the Church is confronted by a secularist, fluid, and Arian-like redefinition of the human person as also no longer including the complementary union of binary man and woman in the vocation of marriage. The discounting of our inborn and universal natural law as also involving receptivity to supernatural grace. (Instead, the informal half-blessing of irregular couples as “couples” of every stripe–a wedge dividing the unity of the Church itself?)
THIRD, providentially today, just as with the writing of St. Athanasius (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, c. 317) shortly prior to Nicaea (325), in 1993 St. Pope John Paul II already explicitly incorporates the permanence of our inborn natural law and moral absolutes directly into the Magisterium of the unified Church:
“The relationship between faith and morality shines forth with all its brilliance in the unconditional respect due to the insistent demands of the personal dignity of every man, demands protected by those moral norms which prohibit without exception actions which are intrinsically evil [….] The Church is no way the author or the arbiter of this norm [….] This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church [!] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 90, 95, 115).
QUESTION: how will the hopeful conclave choose, as between this living Magisterium versus the hopeless fluidities of invertebrate der synodale weg/synodalism?
Note the photo: Donald Wuerl and Wilton Gregory together again. Lord, spare us from apostate Popes.
The Cardinal Wuerl story quite possibly is not the image many assume…
In the mid-1980s and as a deputized auxiliary bishop, Wuerl was part of the solution (including a formal Visitation) to the ongoing drift in the Archdiocese of Seattle. He was disrespected by the entrenched establishment and by the media. Later, at Pittsburgh, he traveled to Rome to convince higher-ups not to reverse one of his many (I think 18 or 19 in all) disciplinary actions against sexual abuses within his new diocese. (His pragmatic mistake—as I recall—was to not also clean out the closet of historical abuses from before his tenure.)
Wuerl is the author of the excellent handbook: “New Evangelization: Passing on the Catholic Faith Today” (Our Sunday Visitor, 2013). As the American cardinal invited to Rome as relator to launch the 2012 Year of Faith, he summarized well our current moment: “It is as if a tsunami of secular influence has swept across the cultural landscape, taking with it such societal markers as marriage, family, the concept of the common good and objective right and wrong.”
Not bad, for an “apostate.”