Bishop of Beijing and beyond
Much worth highlighting from Adam's post are these words from the Holy Spirit Centre's Dr. Lam
For the last few years, the Chinese government always repeats the two conditions for normalization of Sino-Vatican relations. First, the Vatican should cut diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and the Vatican should not interfere in China’s internal affairs.
If we rephrase these two conditions, we may elaborate the two in this way: First, China is a complete and indivisible nation. Any attempt at separating actions, claiming that one side has independent authority outside the central government, is totally unacceptable. Secondly, as a complete and unique government, outside interference is not tolerated.
Interestingly enough, the essence of these two conditions is also present in the Holy Father’s letter. The Holy Father stresses that: first, the Catholic Church is a complete and indivisible Church. Any attempt at creating actions of separation, claiming that one part has independent authority outside the whole Church, is completely unacceptable. Secondly, as a complete and unique Church, outside interference is not tolerated.
Therefore, we can say that the Holy Father treasures the principle of these two conditions of the Chinese Government. So, as a consequence, he asks the Chinese Government, based on the same principles, to respect the Church.
Dr. Lam wrote this while the Papal approval of Bishop Li was still pending, as Adam points out, but it does leave us with a "what next?" question that persists despite the encouraging events of the past few weeks. For me, personally, what I am still waiting for is the episcopal ordination of Guangzhou's Fr. Gan, who received Papal approval late last year, and has not yet been installed. It's possible that the publicized announcement from last year might have hurt his cause with the Religious Affairs folks.
"What next?" is also an interesting question in light of my next read, Decades of Vacillation : Chinese Communist Religious Policy and Its Implementation. This is a book written by Dr. Lam and published by the Holy Spirit Centre in Hong Kong. I picked it up last week at the big Catholic bookstore in Hong Kong. I'll have more on this book sometime in the next few days, but I think the title says a lot. Despite our celebrations of not one but two recent happy episcopal ordinations here in China, that is just what is happening this month. Next month is, well, another month. If previous history is any indication of what to anticipate.......
Another point I think is worth mentioning is about the shape of the Chinese liturgy. Particulalry since the timing Pope's Letter to Chinese Catholics nearly coincided with the Motu Proprio concerning use of the 1962 Missal, my Google alerts have shown me many bloggers that have confused the possible relationship between these two documents because of some misinformation about the Chinese liturgy. In the comments on Adam's blog Domenico asks about which Missal the Chinese use. That they have never adopted a post-conciliar Missal is a common misunderstanding of the world outside of China, and therefore some bloggers have pointed out that the Motu Proprio concerning the 1962 Missal was part of reconciling the Liturgy of the officially-recognized Chinese Catholic Church with the Liturgy of the Roman Rite Church. Adam has posted about this before (with pictures!) and details what a brave and radical move it was for the Chinese priests, particularly then Fr. Zen, to switch from an all- Latin 1962 Missal Mass to a vernacular Novus Ordo Mass. For me, the big surprise was not that they used the Novus Ordo Mass (though I didn't know any of the history behind that), but that the Credo was in fact, sung after the homily. Before I came to China, I had read somewhere (who knows where) that the Creed was forbidden in China. And for those of you who are particular about the translations from the Latin, we do sing Wo (I) and not Women (We).
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