(The following is excerpted from LifeSite news, and the full piece may be found here. For another take on the troubling situation in China, peruse also Douglas Farrow’s recent thoughts).
LETTER FROM CARDINAL ZEN TO THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS:
Your Eminence,
Pardon the inconvenience my letter will cause you. It is just that, in conscience, I believe that the problem I present here concerns not only the Church in China, but the whole Church, and we cardinals have the grave responsibility to help the Holy Father in guiding the Church.
From my analysis of the document of the Holy See (June 28, 2019), “Pastoral guidelines of the Holy See concerning the civil registration of clergy in China,” it is quite clear that it encourages the faithful in China to enter a schismatic church (independent of the pope and under the orders of the Communist Party).
On July 10, I presented my “dubia” to the Pope. His Holiness, on July 3, had promised to take an interest in them, but to this day I have still not heard anything.
Cardinal Parolin says that today when we talk about the independent Church, this independence should no longer be understood as absolute, because the agreement recognizes the role of the pope in the Catholic Church.
First of all, I cannot believe that there is such a statement in the agreement, and I do not see it there. (By the way, why must such an agreement be secret, and why is it not granted even to me, a Chinese cardinal, to see it?) But, even more clearly, the whole reality after the signing of the agreement shows that nothing has changed. Cardinal Parolin quotes a sentence from Pope Benedict’s letter completely out of context — indeed, diametrically opposed to the whole paragraph. This manipulation of the pope emeritus’s thought is gravely disrespectful; indeed, it is a deplorable insult to the person of such a meek pope, who is still alive.
But it also disgusts me that they often declare that what they are doing is in continuity with the thought of the previous pope, while the opposite is true. I have reason to believe (and I hope one day to be able to prove with archival documents) that the agreement signed is the same one that Pope Benedict had, at the time, refused to sign.
Your Eminence, can we passively witness the murder of the Church in China by those who should protect and defend her from her enemies?
Begging on my knees, your brother,
Card. Joseph ZEN, SDB
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
List of Cardinal Zen’s Questions (Dubia) to Pope Francis (Scroll down): https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cdl-zen-tells-pope-francis-that-vaticans-new-pastoral-doc-to-china-justifies-apostasy
‘Cdl Zen urges cardinals to stop the ‘murder of the Church in China’ – https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cdl-zen-decries-vatican-china-deal-in-letter-to-cardinals-it-disgusts-me
Vatican’s June release of new guidelines concerning the civil registration of clergy in China – https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2019/06/28/0554/01160.html#en
‘Chinese govt demands Christians use religion to ‘spread Communist Party principles’ – https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/chinese-govt-demands-christians-use-religion-to-spread-communist-party-principles