China removes more
than 900 church crosses in first half of 2020: report
Note. recently in Nicaragua the
Church is being strongly persecuted as in China, with imprisoned Bishops,
without exiled or imprisoned missionaries and priests. Currently the
system is already completely communist and anti-Catholic, let's pray for that
formerly Catholic country.
new concerns
On October 7, 1954, while the
persecution was intensifying, Pius XII wrote the encyclical Ad Sinarum gentem
which, in AAS 47 (1955), on this occasion, pointed openly to the Three-Self
Movement.
Against the pretense of governmental
autonomy, the Pope writes: «Even when the greatest number of the Chinese clergy
no longer needs the help of foreign missionaries, the Catholic Church in your
nation, as in all the others, cannot be governed with autonomy of government,
as today is used to say. Indeed, even then, as you well know, it will be
absolutely necessary for your Christian community, if it wants to form part of
the society that has been divinely founded by our Redeemer, to submit totally
to the Supreme High Priest, Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, and be with him
closely united, as far as religious faith and morality are concerned. With
these words - it should be observed - the whole life and work of the Church is
embraced; and therefore also its constitution, its government, and its
discipline; which things, they all certainly depend on the will of
Jesus Christ, founder of the Church». It is useful to dwell on these last
words and assess the extent of what the Church encompasses in "religious
and moral faith." Faith and morals comprise the entire life and work
of the Church, as well as its constitution, its government, and its discipline.
Immediately, the Pope reiterates the
doctrine concerning the hierarchy of the Church: “By virtue of this divine
will, the faithful are divided into two classes: clergy and laity; by
virtue of the same will the double sacred power is constituted, that is, of
order and of jurisdiction. In addition -which in the same way has been
established by divine disposition- the power of order (by virtue of which the
ecclesiastical hierarchy is made up of bishops, priests and ministers) is
accessed by receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders; Furthermore, the power
of jurisdiction, which is directly conferred on the Supreme Pontiff by divine
right, comes to the bishops of the same right, but only through the Successor
of Saint Peter, to whom not only the simple faithful,
Thirdly, the Pope unmasks the
pretense of economic autonomy: «We earnestly hope that the time will soon come
when, for the needs of the Catholic Church in China, the financial means that
the Chinese faithful manage to provide it will be sufficient; However, as
you well know, the donations collected for this in other nations have their
origin in that Christian charity, by virtue of which all those who have been
redeemed by the sacred blood of Christ are necessarily united one to another by
a fraternal alliance and by divine love they feel impelled to spread
everywhere, according to their strength, the kingdom of our Redeemer. And
this not for political purposes or in any case profane, but only to usefully
put into practice the precept of charity,
Finally, Pius XII condemned doctrinal
autonomy: «Some of you would like your Church to be completely independent, not
only, as we have said, in the government and in the economic part, but also
claim autonomy in the teaching of doctrine. Christianity and in sacred
preaching. [...] But - and it is absurd just to think about it - by what
right can men by their own will, differently according to different nations,
interpret the Gospel divinely revealed by Jesus Christ?».
The Pope summarizes the foregoing by
saying: «You can therefore easily see, Venerable Brothers and beloved sons, how
he cannot claim to be considered and honored with the name of Catholic who
professes or teaches differently from what we have briefly exposed up to now,
as they do. those who have adhered to those pernicious principles in which the
“Three Autonomies” are informed or in other principles of the same kind».
Back to the case of
Monsignor Li Daonan
Let us return to the event of April
13, 1958, in which Monsignor Li Daonan consecrated Fathers Dong Guangqing and
Yuan Wenhua.
To understand why Bishop Li dared to
take this step, it is necessary to remember the seriousness of the situation of
the Catholic Church in China. The Catholics were strangled between two
increasingly suffocating predicaments.
Trouble from the interior, since the
clergy had been reduced practically to nothing. Bishops had been exiled,
killed, or imprisoned. In 1958, there were very few "serving"
bishops left. The priesthood and therefore the sacramental life was in
fatal danger of extinction.
Trouble from abroad, as communication
with Rome was becoming more difficult every day and it became impossible for a
foreign missionary to enter China. Humanly, suffocation was imminent and
the situation had no future.
In order to prescribe the right of
the Church to the maximum, Monsignor Li Daonan sent a telegram to Rome shortly
before April 13 with the names of the Chinese candidates. The Congregation
for the Propagation of the Faith replied that the consecration would be illegal
and threatened to excommunicate the consecrating bishop and the two
consecrated13.
The intervention of
Pius XII
Two months later, on June 29, Pius
XII reacted with AAS 50 (1958), 601 publication of the encyclical Ad
Apostolorum Principis. This is the third public letter addressed to the
Chinese clergy and faithful in less than ten years. After a brief reminder
of the attention that the Church has paid to China, the Pope condemned the
Chinese Patriotic Association: «With a skilfully conceived tactic, an
association has been founded among you, which has taken the name of patriotic,
and to belong to it Catholics are forced with all violence.
"This association -as has been
said in repeated statements- would have the purpose of uniting the clergy and
the faithful in the name of love for the homeland and religion to propagate the
patriotic spirit, to defend peace between peoples, and at the same time to
support, reform and propagate the socialism established in your nation and to
help the civil authorities to defend, when the opportunity arises, what they
call political and religious freedom. It is nevertheless evident that,
under these vague expressions of peace and patriotism, which can deceive the
naive, such an association tends to put into practice certain pernicious
principles and plans.
"With the guise of patriotism,
which is actually shown to be fallacious, such an association aims mainly at
Catholics progressively giving their adherence to the falsehoods of atheistic
"materialism", with which God is denied and all the principles of
religion are rejected. ”.
“Under the pretext of defending
peace, that same association accepts and propagates false suspicions and accusations
against many venerable members of the clergy and even against the bishops and
the Apostolic See itself, attributing to them extravagant purposes of
imperialism, condescension, and complicity in exploitation. of the people, of
premeditated hostility towards the Chinese nation.
"While they affirm that it is
necessary to have absolute freedom in religious matters, with the excuse of
thus facilitating relations between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities,
in fact, the association claims that the Church, neglecting and neglecting its
sacred rights, is totally subject to civil authority.
But then, where is the genuine love
of country? Pius XII answers: «If Christians, due to a duty
of conscience, must give to Caesar, that is to human authority, what
belongs to him, likewise Caesar, that is to say, the rulers, cannot demand from
the citizens submission in the things that touch God and not them and that is
why he cannot ask for obedience when it comes to usurping the sovereign rights
of God, or forcing the faithful to act in opposition to their religious duties,
or to separate themselves from the unity of the Church and its legitimate
hierarchy. Then, without a doubt, every Christian with a serene face and a
firm will repeats the words with which Peter and the other Apostles responded
to the first persecutors of the Church: "We must obey God before
men".
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12. Then, Pius XII refers in a note
to a series of canons of the Council of Trent, the last of which specifies that
the two powers: of order and of jurisdiction, are inseparable in the person of
the bishop: «If anyone says that the bishops [...] who have not been duly
ordained or sent by ecclesiastical and canonical power, but come from
elsewhere, are legitimate ministers of preaching and of the Sacraments: be
anathema». Council of Trent, session XXIII, Of the sacrament of Holy
Orders, canon 7; D 967.
13. John Tong, The Churchjrom 1949 to
1990, in The Catholic Church in Modern China (E. Tang & J.-P. Wieát), Wipf
& Stock, 2013, pp. 13 &
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