Ukraine’s Experience With A Puppet Church Prefigures Francis’s Capitulation To Communist China

The Federalist ^ | April 5, 2018 | Maureen Mullarkey

[tlozo]

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime is not the first to employ a puppet church to absorb, and finally dissolve, the genuine one. In the Ukraine of the 1920s, the so-called Living Church prefigured the Catholic Patriotic Association, a creature of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1950s. It is to this counter-church that Pope Francis bows, in effect making the Catholic Church in China a client of the CPC...

Of relevance here is that the Living Church, with Soviet support, evolved rapidly into a tool of the State Political Police (GPU). It functioned within the orbit of the NKVD, an intelligence agency charged with suppressing “counter-revolutionary activity.” In similar fashion, China’s Catholic Patriotic Association is answerable, ultimately, to the Central Committee of the CPC as its sole governing authority...

In a 2015 meeting with the United Front, Xi repeated old Maoist warnings against ideological pollution from the West. Contamination resides in Christianity, seen as a Western religion...

Philip Walters, an authority in Soviet religious policy, explained: “The aim was now a form of hidden schism; the infiltration of Trojan horses within that church to which the believing population had demonstrated its continuing allegiance.”...

Mao Zedong, repeating Soviet tactics, employed calculated schism with longer patience and better luck than the Stalinists. The church in China has been in de facto schism since the imposition of the Patriotic Association. In exchange for surrendering to the CPC’s separatist creation, Pope Francis receives the fig leaf of an illusory hold on authority no firmer than the pious boilerplate of Vatican diplomats.

Even before holy water had dried on moves toward appeasement, China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) tightened strictures on the underground (canonically legitimate) church.

[tlozo]

"Under the new regulations on religious activities, proposed last September and implemented last February 1st, worship can only be carried out in church, at the times set by the government. Any other place is considered an ‘illegal place’ and those who break such regulations will be subject to prison, fines, expropriation of the building that houses illegal religious activity. Even private homes are now considered an ‘illegal place of worship’"

[Mrs. Don-o]

And not only that, but

• No religious activities (including prayer, instruction or anything else) may be done in any place but the approved church building, and
• No person under the age of 18 is permitted into a church.

So for Catholic Chinese children there will be no religious instruction, prayer, or youth activities of any kind, at any time, anywhere. Sounds like you can't even baptize a child: neither in church nor anyplace else.

The signing of this so-called agreement has been put off for now, but is supposedly going to happen in May. If Pope Francis goes through with this, it will be the worst thing he has ever done. Although there are a lot of things in the running for "worst."

The Chinese Catholics are far better of remaining "underground" and taking their chances.

Pray for an end to this disastrous so-called pontificate.