The Vatican should not cede selection of bishops in China to the Communist Party. Under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control, China has shown itself to be an extraordinarily dictatorial and authoritarian nation. All kinds of freedoms that are taken for granted in the West—freedom of expression, of the media, of religion—are not only denied under CCP rule but routinely and often violently repressed. Human rights activists and lawyers disappear and are tortured, while alternative political parties are crushed. Calls for justice are met with the iron hand of the state. Muslims have been rounded up in the hundreds of thousands and forced into re-education camps in China’s Xinjiang Province. This is a regime that will use any means to maintain its monopoly on power. It is also a regime that knows how to present itself to the West, saying and doing the right things to draw support from leaders abroad. Its veneer of civility is an attempt to cover up the reality of its immorality.
I grew up under this Party-State system and personally experienced the Communist Party’s violence and brutality, and I have known and worked with countless individuals in China who have been persecuted for their beliefs. It has thus been with intense shock and dismay that I have watched the Vatican’s rapprochement with China take shape.
China’s View of Religion
What we currently know of the agreement is that the Vatican will cede selection of bishops in China to the Communist Party. In exchange, the CCP will recognize the pope as the official head of the Catholic Church, and regular relations between the two states will be renewed.
The fact that the Vatican sees these terms as an acceptable basis for reconciliation with a brutal dictatorial regime is a slap in the face to millions.......
