Posted on 04/27/2007 9:34:50 AM PDT by siunevada
BEIJING (UCAN) – A China church official says authorities of the church in China will not discuss with the Vatican the appointment of a bishop for Beijing Diocese because there is no formal China-Vatican diplomatic link.
After the funeral of Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan on April 27, Anthony Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), told UCA News that Beijing Diocese has capable priests to succeed the late prelate and there will be no discussion of the matter with the Vatican.
China and the Vatican have not reached diplomatic ties, Liu said, because the Vatican still maintains "so-called diplomatic relations with Taiwan."
Without diplomatic ties, he continued, the church in China has no official link with the Vatican, so it can hardly say if the church in China should report or not report episcopal candidates to the Vatican.
Liu also said the church will move up the meeting day for the National Catholic Representative Congress to elect new presidents for the CCPA and the government-recognized Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC).
In the meantime, Liu added, he and Bishop Joseph Ma Yinglin of Kunming, secretary general of the BCCCC will oversee the daily operations of those two church bodies, respectively.
Bishop Fu, 76, died of lung cancer on April 20. At that time, he was bishop of Beijing Diocese as well as chairman of the CCPA and acting president of the BCCCC, after Bishop Joseph Liu Yuanren of Nanjing died on April 20, 2005.
Since Bishop Fu was a vice chairperson of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, with the rank of a state leader, his funeral was honored as that of a state leader at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, the main burial ground for revolutionary heroes and high government officials.
Funeral services were held in three sessions. The first, beginning at 8:30, was a memorial service only for members of the NPC including its chairman, Wu Bangguo. President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and other high-ranking state and social organization leaders attended the second session.
The third session, a Catholic prayer service led by Bishop Pius Jin Peixian of Liaoning, began at 10:30. Fourteen other bishops from various dioceses, about 150 priests and some 2,000 nuns, seminarians and laypeople attended the liturgy. Since the hall could not accommodate them all, most of the laypeople stayed outside the hall and remained calm during the liturgy.
When the service ended with Catholics queuing up to pay their last tributes to the deceased prelate, some began to sob. They told UCA News they did so because they felt sad to see Bishop Fu, who once had a stocky body and chubby face, look so small and skinny. Some said they missed their kind and warmhearted bishop.
Security was tight in and outside the cemetery. Only Catholics holding an obituary card issued by the CCPA, BCCCC and Beijing Diocese could enter the hall for the service.
Since Bishop Fu had reached the highest political status among all religious leaders in the communist regime, his coffin was covered with a national flag before the body was sent for cremation.
The ashes of the late bishop's body are to be transferred to Immaculate Conception of Our Lady Cathedral (Nantang, or South Church), where a memorial Mass will be offered at 9:30 a.m. on April 28. Thereafter, UCA News has learned, the ashes will be kept at the Babaoshan cemetery until renovation of the Catholic graveyard is completed.
Bishop Fu was born in 1931 in Qingyuan county, Hebei province. After studies in Beijing seminaries 1941-56, he was ordained in 1956. In 1979, he became the first "self-elected and self-ordained" bishop, without papal approval, after China began economic reforms and an open-door policy the year before.
Attending the funeral were Bishops Johan Fang Xingyao of Linyi, Paul Jiang Taoran of Shijiazhuang, John Liu Jinghe of Tangshan, Joseph Li Mingshu of Qingdao, Joseph Liu Xinhong of Anhui, Francis Lu Xinping of Nanjing, Joseph Ma Yinglin of Kunming, Anthony Tu Shihua of Puqi, John Wang Renlai of Xuzhou, Joseph Xu Honggen of Suzhou, John Baptist Ye Ronghua of Ankang, Vincent Zhan Silu of Mindong and Joseph Zhao Fengchang of Linqing. Auxiliary Bishop Peter Fang Jianping of Tangshan also attended.
I have a strange question, but what Liturgy does the Chinese Patriotic Association use.
Since they broke with the Vatican prior to 1962, shouldn’t they be using the old Missal, or am I expecting too much consistency.
Is it just a challenge - or an attempt to get some sort of official contact going with the Vatican? BXVI seems to be very interested in the Church in China.
Not a strange question at all. I thought it was the old missal (from pictures I’ve seen), but I may be wrong. Anybody know for sure?
I have no idea but that would certainly be consistent if the government established the PCA sometime before 1962.
I believe the difference between the national and underground churches is that one tows the line of the China gov’t policies - ex: ‘one child’ family - while the other does not.
The official church reminds me of the Church of Henry VIII.
Right. As Salvation has pointed out previously, the PCA is a government institution.
But, it’s not a black and white division, if I recall correctly; some PCA bishops have sought and received the Pope’s approval for their ordination.
I don't know if it matters, most of the priests in China aren't validly ordained.
The difference is that the national church wants the secular government to be able to appoint the bishops, who, of course, will follow government policy in everything. This is exactly like the origin of the Anglican church. The efforts the Church is making now are directed at keeping China from going any further down this road, although they are obviously planning on doing so.
However, the question about whether they use the Tridentine Rite or not is interesting. If they do use it, and if BXVI is considering making it easier for priests to celebrate it without “special permissions,” might China be one of the reasons? This could make a reconciliation easier.
from Wikipedia:
CPCA had to declare rejection of papal authority and non-acceptance of formulations of Catholic teaching and instructions issued by the Holy See after 1949, the year communists gained power over all of mainland China. Thus the CPCA could not offically recognize the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1950) by Pope Pius XII, nor the canonizations from 1949 onward (e.g. the canonization of Pope St. Pius X), nor Vatican declarations on even well-established devotional piety (e.g. on the Sacred Heart of Jesus or on Mary as Queen), nor the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). In practice, however, Chinese translations of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church (revised in 1997) and of the 1970 Roman Missal, which at first had to be imported from Taiwan and Hong Kong, have been printed locally for some years.[2]
The CPCA thus could not accept the 1970 revision of the Roman Missal by Pope Paul VI, so that Mass continued to be celebrated in mainland China in the Tridentine Mass form. For lack of the revised text in Latin or Chinese, even priests who refused any connection with the CPCA kept the older form. As the effects of the Cultural Revolution faded in the 1980s, the Mass of Paul VI began to be used, and at the beginning of the next decade the CPCA officially permitted the publication even locally of texts, originally prepared in Taiwan, that brought the Mass liturgy into line with that in use in other countries. Since the Canon of the Mass is now said aloud, observers have been able to check that the Pope’s name is mentioned even by those priests who, at least externally, accept directions from the CPCA, leading to the conclusion that “there is only one Catholic Church in China, whether state-recognized or so-called underground, they have the same faith, and the same doctrine.”[3]
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