Sieren's China: The Catholic church's aspirations for Asia
After decades of fraught relations between the Holy See and Beijing, rapprochement appears to be on the agenda at long last. But the Catholic church in Taiwan will pay a price, says DW columnist Frank Sieren.
Date 01.12.2014
Author Frank Sieren
For Pope Francis, the pre-Christmas period is a time of reconciliation. He spent the first Sunday of Advent in Istanbul with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, a milestone in the history of relations between the Catholic and the Orthodox church, also using his trip to Turkey to reach out to Muslims. Moreover, the pope is keen to deepen China's ties to the Catholic church. Last week, it emerged that after four years of unofficial talks, Beijing reportedly proposed to review appointments of bishops jointly with the Vatican. This is an important issue for the Catholic church, given its declining numbers: Along with South America and Africa, China represents the most promising opportunity - as yet untapped - for growth.
China's fears of Catholicism
Until now, Beijing has never been particularly well-disposed to Catholics, and has certainly never been willing to let them have any political say. The separation between church and state is a stark one in China, a principle that doesn't only apply to Catholics. Beijing is of the opinion that the Vatican, with the help of Nobel Peace Prizewinner Lech Walesa, played a key role in bringing down the Soviet Union. The former firebrand who led the strikes at the Gdansk dockyards spent the 1980s fighting Poland's communist leadership. On June 4, 1989, the day of Beijing's bloody crackdown on students and protestors on Tiananmen Square, Walesa's Solidarity won Poland's first partly free elections. In late 1990, he won Poland's presidential election.
This goes some way to explaining why it took the Chinese government 25 years to reach a compromise agreement with the Vatican, decades after Mao forced the Catholic church, which was officially recognized in China, to sever diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1951. Ever since then, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which toes the Communist party line, has named Catholic bishops in mainland China without the Vatican's approval. As far as the government was concerned, the section of China's Roman Catholic community which was unwilling to sever ties with the pope splintered off into an illegal, underground church.
The underground Catholic movement
Because the underground movement's bishops are appointed by the pope, Beijing does not recognize their legitimacy. Even today, members of the Chinese Roman Catholic house churches, as they are known, face persecution and oppression, and most services are held in secret. Only 15 million of China's population of 1.3 billion belong to either the government-sanctioned Catholic church or the "underground" churches loyal to the Vatican. Theoretically, there could be many more.
http://www.dw.de/sierens-china-the-catholic-churchs-aspirations-for-asia/a-18104609
