By Chen Guangcheng
{Editor’s Note: Reports indicate that the Vatican is getting closer to signing a contract with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in which they jointly appoint Bishops in China. If this agreement actually materializes, it will represent a significant reversal in the position of the Roman Catholic Church, which used to take a hard position against the CCP.
In the past, the Vatican didn’t recognize the CCP since it denies the existence of God. In fact, the Vatican and China have not had formal relations for the past 70 years since the communist government took control in the country in 1951. The two have fought over the issue of appointing Bishops in China. The Vatican appoints its Bishops, but the CCP denies them and has appointed its own Bishops.
To project an image of “religious freedom” in China, the CCP has established the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China. It exists on a small scale and is completely under the CCP’s leadership. The Three-Self refers to “self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation,” a clear declaration that it is independent from the Christian establishment.
Many people who know the true nature of the CCP have criticized the Vatican for this move, including Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kuin, 86, the ex-Bishop of Hong Kong, who Pope Benedict XVI elevated to Cardinal on February 22, 2006. The renowned blind Chinese human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng also wrote a critical article on the subject. {1} Chen, who filed a class action lawsuit against the authorities for excessive enforcement of the one-child policy (through forced abortions) gained international attention in 2012 for escaping house arrest, fleeing to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and managing to attain asylum for himself and his family in the U.S.
A translation of Chen’s article follows.}
I was born and raised in China under the communist despotism. I personally experienced the brutal torture and persecution that the atheists of the Communist Party committed against dissidents. They have no fear of God or any moral bottom line; they have committed innumerable murders with a total disregard for human life for the sole purpose of maintaining their reign.
Take the violent “family planning” as an example. The CCP killed between 360 and 400 million fetuses over the past 30 years or so. In the first half of 2005, in the city of Linyi, Shandong Province alone, over 100,000 women were forced to have abortions. More than 600,000 members of their families were kidnapped, detained, and tortured.
In the past 69 years since the CCP seized power, countless people have died at the hands of the CCP in their many political campaigns.
I have always admired true Catholics, Christians, Buddhists, and Falun Gong believers. Their lives and conduct are guided by principles. They believe that nothing can escape the eyes of God and that both good and evil are under the constraints of the law of nature or providence.
However, recently the media broke the news that the Vatican has been quietly cooperating with the CCP. It is said that the two sides have reached an agreement on the appointment of the bishops in mainland China. After the CCP holds the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March this year, Beijing will send representatives to the Vatican to sign the agreement. This, in fact, is the equivalent of selling out God’s home to the devil.
Doesn’t the Vatican understand that in China, everything depends completely on the will of the Chinese Communist Party? Why did the Vatican sever diplomatic relations with China in 1951 when the Chinese Communists took over? It was precisely because the CCP insisted that it must control everything, including God. After 67 years of deadlock with the Chinese Communist Party, the Vatican has abandoned its principles and now accepts the CCP’s leadership. This will be a shame in Catholic history that can never be washed away.
Historically, the Catholic Church has established a record of compromising with fascist or authoritarian regimes. During World War II, Pope Pius XII in Rome was criticized for betraying the Jews in Europe: he insisted on being neutral and never publicly condemned Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
After the Soviet military violently suppressed the Hungarian revolt in 1956, the Vatican marginalized Cardinal Mindszenty who opposed communism. The Vatican advocated a compromise with the new puppet regime. If, when the righteous is fighting against the evil, self-proclaimed justice cannot uphold the principle of supporting the righteous and eliminating the evil, then the choice to “maintain neutrality” means moving away from justice toward evil, pausing in the middle between justice and evil, or even getting closer to evil.
In particular, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo’s recent remarks are disconcerting. I cannot but ask: Are they pretending to be naive, or are they really that naive? Are they really trying to lead the Catholic Church, which has more than one billion followers, to make a deal with the anti-Christian and antichrist CCP?
Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo said, “(In China,) you do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs.” There is a “positive national conscience.” “The central value in China is work, work, and work.” {2}
It is not that China does not have slums. Rather, the CCP does not allow slums. In other words, slums are everywhere in China. There are many socially vulnerable groups. … For example, handicapped people have a hard life without medical insurance. Mr. Zheng Yanliang in Hebei could not afford medical treatment. He had no choice, so he bought a saw blade and cut off both of his diseased legs at home.
Sometimes, Chinese people wake up and suddenly find many homeless panhandlers and handicapped persons on the streets, only to learn later that different local governments, in order to avoid affecting their cityscape, rounded up and sent local panhandlers to other cities. The CCP is constantly driving these homeless people away as they are “low-end population.”
Use of illegal drugs has in fact been rampant and unabated in China. Such things can hardly be reported in the media, only because, under the CCP’s censorship of the media, there is no freedom of speech or freedom of the press.
When the CCP had me imprisoned, I observed that about five percent of the prisoners transferred from detention centers or other prisons every month were drug traffickers. There are many more drug addicts. Many young people often go to different clubs. At that time, I was greatly surprised to hear them exchanging their experiences with magu (a stimulant consisting of methamphetamine and caffeine), and ice (mephitis, technically called methamphetamines). Not only did they use code words that I could not understand, but also, I was ignorant before imprisonment, I absolutely had no idea that drugs had flooded (China) to such a grave extent.
As for work, many migrant workers have to leave their families behind in their hometowns, lose their dignity, and bear exploitation only to receive poor wages. They work more than ten hours a day without “three insurances” (pension insurance, unemployment insurance, and medical insurance) and vacations. At the end of the year, their employers often delay or default on their wage payments. However, do these workers have any choice?
In August last year, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo went to China and attended a conference on organ donation and transplantation. At that time he praised China for setting up a global best practice model for eradicating organ trafficking. He also said that China today is not the one where John Paul II was the Pope from 1978 to 2005, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Sorondo’s willful ignorance is beyond disgusting. I would like to ask him: “Did you know that, last year, 32 college students in Wuhan inexplicably went missing? The CCP did not provide any leads in spite of the ‘Sky Eye Project’ (the CCP uses the grid in which it controls hundreds of millions of cameras to follow the movements of everyone in society). Instead it detained the reporters who called for support for the parents who lost their children!
“In China, many children were stolen or snatched while playing in the street. Their organs were later removed and sold. In addition, there are investigative reports by Falun Gong practitioners on organ harvesting as well as reports of the disappearance of some migrant workers for no apparent reason. All these appalling occurrences under the CCP’s rule demonstrate the rampant trafficking of organs in China.
“To conduct organ transplants, from the blood test, matching, and removal, to storage, transporting, and transplantation, each step is full of technical challenges. It is not something that any small triads can do. In China where the CCP has a monopoly on control, organ transplants cannot happen without the CCP’s direct involvement. Therefore, we believe that it is the CCP regime itself that monopolizes the ongoing organ transplant business. Is this the best practice model for eradicating the organ trafficking that Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo spoke of?”
China is not the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but the CCP is no different from how the Soviet Union was at that time. It has constantly been escalating its control over the Chinese people’s thinking as well as its suppression and persecution of human rights defenders and those who defend democracy, freedom, the rule of law, rights lawyers, and religious freedom. The CCP’s atrocities have been at their worst compared to the time of Pope John Paul II. They use black hoods, kidnapping by gangsters, torture in black cells, persecution of family members, and so much more. In fact, it is not that China is better than it was at the time of Pope John Paul II; rather, it is that Pope Francis is far different from Pope John Paul II.
There is a saying in the West that, “Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.” Because nobody believes in communism, the Chinese communist regime dismantled many churches last year in order to control the rapid increase in religious believers. There is also an old saying in China that things always reverse their course after reaching an extreme.
At the time when the Chinese people are constantly awakening and moving toward revolt, knowing that the dictatorship is the source of so much social injustice; at the time when Western countries are gradually recognizing the evil nature of the CCP and see the dawn of China’s impending revolution, the Vatican’s making a deal with the devil CCP will not only humiliate the Vatican itself but it will also tarnish the church of God that it supposedly represents.
Endnotes:
{1} Radio Free Asia, “The Vatican Will Make a Deal with the Devil,” February 20, 2018.
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/zhuanlan/chenguangchengboke/chgch-02202018141714.html.
{2} Catholic Herald, “‘China is the best implementer of Catholic social doctrine,’ says Vatican bishop,” February 6, 2018.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/02/06/china-is-the-best-implementer-of-catholic-social-doctrine-says-vatican-bishop/.