Andrew Bolt: Vatican’s China deal reveals Pope dancing to tune of dictatorship
As the Vatican reveales it will renew an agreement with China that effectively lets this tyranny choose its own bishops, it has only made the dictatorship stronger and the Pope himself has been gagged, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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China’s dictatorship just got stronger.
It’s beaten down the Catholic Church and muzzled Pope Francis.
The Vatican this week signalled it will next month renew an agreement with China that effectively lets this tyranny choose its own bishops. Tame bishops.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Rome on Wednesday to try to intervene, warning the church “endangers its moral authority, should it renew the deal”.
But the Pope reportedly refuses to meet him, another sign that he dances to China’s tune.
The Vatican refuses to reveal the contents of its deal with China, signed two years ago, but its Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, insisted on Tuesday “a direction has been marked out that is worth continuing”.
But even in quoting him, the official Vatican News could not hide the church’s shame: that under this deal, more bishops had since been appointed in China “with Rome’s agreement”. China appoints, the Vatican merely approves.
What a betrayal of church tradition. It is 900 years since one of the great popes, Gregory VII, risked his life to insist no ruler could appoint their own bishops. The church was not a slave to any state.
Pope Francis’s agreement with China was meant to help the Vatican connect to Catholics in China’s state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.
But all the benefits have gone to the dictatorship, which hasn’t stopped persecuting Catholics. It has arrested dissident priests in Jiangxi, and banned priests in Yujiang from “engaging in any religious activity in the capacity of clergy”.
But China’s victory goes beyond that. It’s managed to gag the Pope.
Francis has been shamefully silent on China’s abuses of human rights, including the imprisonment of a million Muslims.
Even worse, his church in Hong Kong seems to be helping China tighten its grip on the former British colony.
As residents protested for their freedom, Cardinal John Tong ordered Hong Kong priests to “watch our language” and avoid “provocative” preaching on politics.
He himself, however, preached that China’s oppressive new national security law, limiting free speech, “will have no effect on religious freedom”.
Church texts for Hong Kong schools now include prayers with lines such as: “I will learn to love my country like Jesus did, in order to show my gratitude to you.”
The church once fought for freedom. This Pope now sells it out.