Pulled from an Open Book thread on the Church in China

Yesterday I noted that Open Book was going to have a thread about the Catholic Church in China and that I was eager to read it, especially if a certain commenter was going to appear and give his native insight. so you don't have to sift through the whole thread, I thought I would just reprint the comments that I was hoping for.

First there was this one:

Hey guys, I'll pop out of the bushes here for a moment, but I'm not taking incoming email these days, and I'm hesitant to say too much of a political flavor due to the current involvement of a family member in an international political/judicial matter. Discretion is the better part of valor and all that.
At the risk of sounding cliche, the situation of the Church in China,
like many things in China, is inscrutable:
Unsearchable; incapable of being searched into and understood by inquiry or study; impossible or difficult to be explained or accounted for satisfactorily; obscure; incomprehensible; as, an inscrutable design or event.
Most Western journalists just don't understand China, or how things work in China. Heck, these days many Western journalists can't even report sensibly on things Catholic!
China is ancient; China is very diverse linguistically, culturally, ethnically, geographically. How somethings works in Beijing is not necessarily how it works in Guangdong, or Hong Kong, or Hebei, or Chongqing, let alone Western China. The difference between Western China and Beijing is about the same as between Sudan and London,
if they were in the same country.
There is no such thing as "the status of the Church in China," because things are very different in different regions, and depend a lot on the local personalities (Christians and officials), how they cooperate or clash, etc. Even if there was a "status," nobody would publish it
or talk much about it, because then somebody, somewhere might take it as a challenge to change it! One of the best ways to get things done in China is quietly, privately. Make too much noise, or publish something too widely, and it will be taken as a challenge by somebody, somewhere.
Remember that the basic cultural fabric is Confucian, and "right action" is the basic moral compass, regardless of politcs. Humility is very important, hence the reluctanct to "blow one's horn" or "sell one's goods." The basic unit of society is still the family, the household, the clan, and that is where life happens. You won't here much about that in the West because the realities of life in China are still closed to most Westerners, especially journalists.
Let the Chinese take care of the Church in China. You take care of the Church in your place. Pray for each other. Don't believe what you read in the media.

And then after he was rudely challenged by a very young, ambitious, and blog-ubiquitous community college student from Florida

Persons interested in learning more about the Catholic Church in China might find the following resource of interest:
U.S. Catholic China Bureau at Seton Hall University. Among other things, they host the National Catholic China Conference, and the 21st annual conference was held in June in Seattle. One of the papers, by Sr. Betty Anne Maheu, MM, was an update on the Catholic Church in
China. A quote:
Let me give you a very concrete example of how confused the
situation can be at times. One day a bishop from the north arrived at our office....He had received an invitation to visit Germany, and had obtained his passport from the government....His passport did not allow him to travel beyond Germany. Nonetheless, once in Germany he said, "This is so close to Rome, why don't I drop in on the Holy Father?" Someone arranged for him to go to Rome to see the Holy Father, and somewhere along the way he managed to obtain the entire bishop's regalia....When the bishop saw the photographs of him with the Holy Father, he was ecstatic! So he got many of them and had them enlarged. When he returned to Hong Kong, we cautioned him that it might not be a good idea to display these publicly since he had no permission to go to Rome. But his enthusiasm got the better of him... When he got home, he framed the photos and put them in the vestibule where they were prominently visible to anyone. The authorities came in, took one look at the photos, and asked, "Who made you a Bishop?" Not willing to divulge the name of the bishop who originally ordained him, he said, "The Holy Father!" They did not believe him, of course. This man we knew as a bishop was, in reality, a bishop in the undergound church and a priest in the open church!We in the West, who like things neatly boxed in their individual categories, are not comfortable with this kind of ambiguity. Every
year I give the orientation of the situation of the Church in China....I say to them, "If you can't stand ambiguity, don't get on the plane!"
Lots of good stuff there.
You can also look at:
The Cardinal Kung
FoundationFederation of Asian
Bishops ConferencesAsiaNews.it
By the way, the latest from AsiaNews is:
According to AsiaNews’s Vatican sources, the Holy See has already informed the Chinese government of its invitation to the four bishops and is waiting for a reply.
Speaking from Beijing, CCPA chairman Liu Bainian said he had not
been officially informed about it. “I’ve read the news on the internet, but we haven't received a formal invitation,” Liu Bainian told Reuters. The Vatican has not “contacted either the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association or the Chinese Catholic Bishops Conference,” he added.
According to Church watchers in China, the Vatican may have bypassed the CCPA—which is still full of ideologically Stalinist characters and leftovers from the Cultural Revolution—and gone straight to the government.
Call it ambiguity. Or call it the Chinese way. Or call it what [name taken out by Ambrose] calls it. Whatever.