"Partakers in the Suffering": Recent Events in China's Hopeful Church

Catholic World Report ^ | 1/27/16 | Anthony E. Clark PhD

[marshmallow]

The situation in China is far more complex than a simple chronicle of antagonism, suspicion, and persecution; progress and hope also punctuate the narrative

Beloved, do not be startled at the trial by fire now taking place among you to prove you, as if something strange were happening to you; but rejoice, in so far you are partakers of the Suffering of Christ. (1 Peter 4:12)

"Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief," asserts Article thirty-six of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, "No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion." This guarantee to allow "freedom of religious belief" is followed by the caveat, "The state protects normal religious activities." Christians in China, and in most nations today for that matter, continue to struggle to navigate in a political framework wherein they are promised freedom to be Christian, but only if one's Christianity conforms to the state's definition of "normal."

The Columban missionary to China, Fr. Edward MacElroy (1911-80), who was arrested at gunpoint in the middle of the night by Communist police in 1951, compared religious freedom in China to being condemned to death:

A man has been condemned to death. He remains free to walk around his cell. He may be free to walk, under close supervision, around the prison yard. When the last morning comes he will be free to walk to the scaffold. There is the freedom enjoyed by the Catholic Church in China. It is the freedom to walk down the years, at the point of a Communist gun, to the day when she will die. [1]

Catholics in China today are.....