China’s Church: Awakening the Dream of Hope | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D. | Catholic World Report
There is plenty of bad news to be heard about Catholics in China. But there is good news that usually goes unreported.
Courage in a Time of Uncertainty
Aristotle famously wrote that, “Hope is a waking dream.” Hope, to indeed be hope, must awake; it must be a dream that is made real. China’s dreams for religious freedom and tolerance have for nearly a century been slumbering under a strong anesthetic, but recent months have shown slow but tangible signs of waking. China’s Catholics have embraced the “new evangelization,” and have decided that, as J R. R. Tolkien once said, “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
As I write this column I am aware of the recent arrests of Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin and his chancellor, Father Jiang Sunian; they are scheduled to undergo ideological classes: brainwashing. Only two months ago, Bishop John Ruowang was also arrested and forced to attend government classes. In fact, the bureau chief of the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department met with representatives of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association on March 2, and exhorted them to “convert the underground community.” What the media often fails to mention is that the two Catholic communities – sanctioned and unsanctioned – collaborate more often than they conflict. Despite official exhortations, “above ground” clergy are more interested in converting non-Christians than in the playing ideological games with their fellow Catholics. The state continues its old antics, and the world watches critically as it coerces and controls the Catholic Christians who desire little more than freedom to love and serve God, as well as love their country.
But I shall focus my remarks here on more optimistic news.
I am often struck by the irony that China’s Catholics, who have less access to papal encyclicals, are more interested in them than many American Catholics, some of whom it seems are unaware such encyclicals exist. The Holy Father’s 2005 encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, has had a weighty effect on the routine lives of Chinese Catholics, and its opening line, “天主是爱” (God is love), has inspired a renewal of charity and evangelization throughout the country, and the first few months of 2012 have seen a precipitous rise in Catholic outreach and catechumens. A Chinese priest in Rome has provided me with several reports of hope from within China’s long suffering Church. In typically euphemistic language, the Chinese nuns of Guangxi went to a small leper community in the rural mountains to, as they said, “bring spring to winter.” In order to “be the hands and feet of Christ” in their “winter” of suffering, these sisters brought “smiles and gifts” to the forgotten victims of leprosy.
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