China’s ongoing religious persecution

Under the category of “How did they get awarded the Olympic games?”, now this.

Brain washing Catholic priests to convince them of the “error of their ways”; in short of having published and distributed the Pope’s Letter to China’s Catholics: it is taking place in Nanning, a major city of the autonomous Guangxi region, (south west China), where the government has launched a campaign to counter the Vatican “penetration” in the life of the Church.  Meantime in Qingxiu district, close to Nanning, police sequestered and destroyed copies of a parish letter which carried parts of the papal document.

This has been going on for months, out of the sight and ‘off the radar’ of the Western world.

June 30th Benedict XVI published a Letter to the Catholics of China with which he exhorted them to live the Christian mission and witness for the good of their country and to draw closer the underground and official Church, asking all of those involved to witness with greater courage their unity with the Holy See.  In turn, with cordial and respectful terms, the pontiff requested that Chinese authorities respect the religious freedom of the faithful and the appointment of bishops.

Chinese authorities did not return the respect or cordiality. They have been cracking down ever since, especially wherever the pope’s letter surfaces.

The secretary of the communist party and the local government gave “maximum attention to the case” gathered together the priests forcing then to a “work of political thought” (in short brainwashing) so that “by learning from their mistake, they may continue to raise the standard of love for the motherland and the Church, and strongly oppose the words and activities of the Vatican”.

By the term “Church” they mean the “People’s Church”, the puppet one the communist part put in place to placate the people and control their gatherings, and the messages they hear.

The publication of extracts from the papal Letter is judged to be “an activity which damages the Nation and its people”.  This explains why copies were sequestered and the publishing house that printed the newsletter closed down…

According to western diplomats Liu Bainian judges the document as an “evil document”, “badly translated into Chinese”, “dangerous from a political point of view” and for this reason he has blocked its distribution, cancelling the text on Chinese Catholic websites, blocking Vatican sites, that of AsiaNews and others that carried it.

They are afraid of the truth.

Last weekend at Mundelein’s Liturgical Institute conference, Fr. Peter Girard gave a compelling account of the moment the communist party realized – when looking back – that things had turned and they were defeated. It was after a homily by Pope John Paul II at a Mass in the largest public square in Poland after nearly three decades of suppression and repression. He told the people that their’s was a Christian history and culture, and no one could take their faith from them.

The rest is history. But for China, it’s still the games.