THE COMMUNIST PERSECUTION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CHINA. (SECOND PART)

 

THE MOVEMENT OF THE THREE AUTONOMIES

Independence, "autonomy" in imitation of the Vatican, meant for them, with good reason, the abandonment of the faith. Their fears were justified: very soon, Catholics found themselves under pressure to join the Movement. When Monsignor Dominic Deng Yimin, the Bishop of Guangdong, was arrested, the crime he was accused of during virtually hundreds of interrogations was his refusal to participate in the Three-Self Movement, as well as his refusal to sever ties with the Holy Campus.

Monsignor Antonio Riberi

Monsignor Antonio Riberi, a prelate of Monegasque origin, served as apostolic nuncio in various countries (Bolivia, Ireland, Kenya) before being appointed, in 1946, internuncio in China. Faithful to Catholic doctrine, he encouraged resistance against the communist movement. In 1949, he made his headquarters in Nanking and presented his credentials on behalf of Rome to the newly established government, which he did not do without a hint of provocation. Before the victory of the PC, Monsignor Riberi had energetically supported the expansion of the Legion of Mary. This Legion, founded in Ireland in 1921, spread from 1930 to China, where it held weekly sessions in which they devoted themselves to the study of catechism and theology, as well as to common prayer. Thanks to the deepening of social doctrine, the Legion preserved the spirit of the Catholics against Marxist ideas. We can imagine the suspicion of the PCC towards the Legion. Between 1950 and 1952, a real hate campaign was unleashed against him. That suspicion was also directed against Monsignor Riberi.

In the context of the Korean War, some Catholics, including several priests and even Vicar General Li Weiguang, believed that they should join the Three-Self Movement and even the Communist Front to "resist the United States" and help Korea. Monsignor Riberi condemned these methods in a pastoral letter and urged the bishops to remain united with Rome: «The Catholic religion -he said- is supra-political and cannot be divided by borders and national differences. Any entity that calls itself an independent Catholic Church is simply a schismatic church."

On May 24, 1951, the Renmin Ribao 6 accused the nuncio Antonio Riberi of encouraging "opposition to the patriotic movement" among Chinese Catholics. Other incendiary items happened to him. Finally, the same newspaper claimed to refer to a request for the expulsion of the nuncio by an agency that was directly under his control. The "request" was fulfilled and Monsignor Riberi was expelled. "I leave with pain and my prayers are incessantly with the Chinese people, with our priests, our brothers and faithful."

The birth of the Chinese Patriotic Church

Among the local bishops, Monsignor Ignacio Kung Pin-Mei, Bishop of Shanghai, was noted for his fidelity to the Roman Church. His first confrontation with the government took place when it took control of Catholic educational institutions.

Monsignor Kung prohibited communion to the faithful who had joined the Communist Party. On September 7, 1955, he was arrested along with 321 priests and two Carmelite nuns. Three weeks later, more than six hundred laymen and another fifteen priests were arrested. Monsignor Kung was sentenced to life imprisonment. He blamed himself for refusing to join the Three-Self Movement. Indeed, Monsignor Kung was convinced that the break with the Vatican was nothing more than an act of destruction of the Church in China. “I am a Roman Catholic bishop. If I denounce the Holy Father, I will not only stop being a bishop, but I will also stop being a Catholic. They can cut off my head, but they can never take away my homework."

Monsignor Kung's case    was not the only one. That same year, in other dioceses, hundreds of priests, bishops, men and women religious were arrested. In 1956, Mao launched the "Hundred Flowers Campaign," in which all the people were invited to present their grievances to the Party. The result of this "comedy ended in tragedy*" was the arrest of some 550,000 "intellectuals" considered "right-wing" for having criticized the Party. Four bishops who had not previously been imprisoned came forward to issue their complaints. Premier Zhou. Enlai received them personally. It seems that it was after this meeting that we can locate the origin of the founding of the Chinese Patriotic Church Association.

This organization, created on July 15, 1957 by the Office of Religious Affairs of the People's Republic of China, sought to establish state control over Chinese Catholics and create an autonomous Church. The Patriotic Church Association henceforth became the "Catholic" equivalent of what was the Three-Self Movement for Protestants. However, it should be noted that the Catholics who adhered to the Association of the Patriotic Church firmly declared that they did not want, in any way, to effect a schism with Rome. Some bishops attached to the Association sent letters of obedience to the Pope 9.

Crossing the red line...

On April 13, 1958, Monsignor Li Daonan, who participated in the Patriotic Church, conferred episcopal consecration on two Franciscan priests: Dong Guangqing and Yuan Wenhua. The event had an unexpected repercussion for its authors. What motivated this act? What was Rome's reaction to the ministers and subjects of consecration? We will discover it in the next part, after knowing the different pontifical acts concerning China since the origins of the communist regime.

The condemnation of communism

The first act of the Magisterium that condemns communism is found, of course, in the encyclical Quipluribus of Pius IX. More recently, when the Chinese communist movement was already wreaking havoc, Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Divini Redemptoris, especially dedicated to communism. There communism is pointed out as "a false redemption of the humble", an "intrinsically perverse" system with which we must not collaborate in any way "if we want to save the social order and Christian civilization from destruction"10.

The warning of Pius XII. We will remember that one of Mao's first measures against the Church. Pius XII's response is found in the apostolic letter Cupimus Imprimís dated 18 AAS 44 (1951), January 153, 1952, addressed not only to the bishops and priests of China, but to all Chinese Christian faithful.

«The Catholic religion, as you know, does not contradict any true doctrine, any public or private institution that is based on justice, freedom and charity, but all this is encouraged, enhanced and perfected by it. It is not opposed to the natural nature of any people, to its peculiar customs, nor to its civilization, which benevolently welcomes them and embellishes itself with them as with new and varied ornaments.

The Church is not subject to any State: «The Church does not call to herself a single people, a single nation, but loves all people, of whatever race they may be, with that supernatural love of Christ that should unite all with a bond of brotherhood and mutual solidarity. That is why no one can affirm that it is at the service of a certain power, nor can it be asked that, broken the unity of which its Divine Founder has wanted to adorn it and, constituted particular Churches in each nation, these separate unhappily of the Apostolic See, in which Peter, Vicar of Jesus Christ, continues to live in his successors until the end of time. If any Christian community wanted to do this, it would wither like a branch torn from the vine, and it would not be able to produce healthy fruit”.

This warning against a schismatic tendency implicitly refers to the Three-Self Movement. Later, the Pope disapproved of the expulsion of foreign missionaries: «And if it is imposed on all the missionaries, who, having abandoned their own and beloved homeland, have labored among you in the field of the Lord, that they move away from your places, as if they were harmful to them, for this very reason they are required, something not only ungrateful, but also very damaging for the very development of your Church. Due to the fact that they are not citizens of a single foreign nation, but are chosen from among many others, even more, from among all the nations where the Catholic religion is flourishing and the flame of the Christian apostolate has developed, it is evident that, by a note of its own character, the Catholic Church is universal, and that these heralds of the Gospel seek nothing else.

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6. The Renmin Ribao, literally "People's Daily" (A R. EJ 1) is the official press organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. It is in China what Pravda was in the USSR

9. Edmond Tang, The Church into the 1990S, in The Catholic Church in Modern China, Perápehtives, edited by Edmond Tang & Jean-Paul WieSt, Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2013, p. 28.

10. If we believe what the French Catholic magazines of the year 1937 say, the voice of the Pope did not cross the Alps. In France, no one listened to her. Only one man, a prisoner of the State and sanctioned by the Pope, wrote to the Holy Father: "I will never be able to express to his Holiness my fervent admiration for the blow he deals to the forces of evil." Cf. Guátavo Coráo, O Sécülo do Nada, Record, 1973, part II, c. 2. On the contrary, this same voice reached beyond the Caucasus, since the encyclical was not ignored by Monsignor Riberi, the internunciation.

11. Accusing the Church of being a danger to the Republic is as old as the Church itself. In China, since 1922, the student-led Anti-Christian Movement sought to establish a link between Christianity and imperialism. Pius XI put a (temporary) stop to these calumnies with his letter of June 15, 1926 Ab ipsis pontificatus primordiis. See this topic in Sergio Ticozzi, Ending Civil Patronage: The Beginning of a New Era for the Catholic Missions in China, 1926, in Catholicism in China, 1900-present (Cindy Yik-yi Chu), Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

There was a fact that refuted the imperialism of which the Vatican was accused: on April 11, 1946, Pius XII established an ecclesiastical hierarchy in China with the rise of twenty provinces made up of 79 dioceses and 38 apostolic vicariates. Two months earlier, Monsignor Tilomas Tien Ken-sin had been promoted to cardinalate, thus becoming the first Chinese and even the first Asian to be named cardinal.