Just as the Patriotic (state run) Church in Communist China is planning to consecrate a few more bishops, here, I read at CWN that …
Leaders of Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association meets with Brazilian bishops, propose dialogue
A delegation from China’s government-backed Catholic Patriotic Association met with the secretary of the Brazilian bishops’ conference last week — on the very day that the Patriotic Association defied the Vatican by installing a new bishop without the Pope’s approval. [Odd time for a meeting. Trying to broker a deal or… something else?]
The Chinese delegation met with Archbishop Leonardo Steiner in order to “propose a dialogue” with the Brazilian bishops. A statement by the Chinese visitors was briefly posted on the web site of the Brazilian bishops’ conference and then removed, hinting that the Brazilian prelate may not have been informed that he was meeting with a group whose existence Pope Benedict has decried. [Ummmm… ?!?] The Chinese delegation was in Brazil in response to an invitation from another group.
The Patriotic Association has refused to recognize the authority of the Holy See in the affairs of the Church in China, and has vowed to appoint its own bishops without Vatican approval. In response the Vatican has announced that the bishops who are thus ordained are excommunicated, and have no authority over the Church in their Chinese dioceses.
UCAN has this.
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I read this over at Rorate earlier this week. The Brazilians tried to sweep it under the rug, but people took screencaps of the website.
It’s obviously not only in the economic sphere that the People’s Republic is doing its level best to co-opt established democracies and structures…
Father,
This news story was first reported by the Brazilian Catholic blog Fratres in unum and was eventually picked up by international blogs (both in the English and Italian languages). To my knowledge, our friends at Rorate Caeli were the first English-speaking blog to report this affair.
Rorate’s post about this story (at: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-this-joke.html) explains the situation very clearly, and in more detail than the sources quoted above.
The fact that the Brazilian Conference of Catholic Bishops is welcoming the Patriotic Association for dialogue is absurd on many levels. I will cite just two: first, they are attempting to usurp the Holy See’s competence of conducting ecclesiastical diplomacy; second, they show that they unfortunately are a Conference of Bishops that is still a bastion of rupturist-leftist ideas of marxist inspiration.
The number of dioceses in this country needs to be greatly reduced. We have the largest Episcopate in the world and the greatest number of dioceses but we do not deserve those figures, because, although Brazil is the country in the world with the greatest number of Catholics, this is just a number of nominal Catholics. Countries that are much smaller in overall population, and in the population of Catholics, such as Poland, Italy and Spain, have more priests than Brazil. So it must be very difficult to find good Bishops to fill hundreds of Sees among a clergy that, with honorable exceptions, is, for the most part, not that much loyal to the Holy See and the magisterium.
The fact that Brazil has just legalized same-sex unions via a Supreme Court decision on a constitutional case is just another moment brought to us by Vatican II, while the Episcopal Conference took no meaningful action, either before or after the judgement, instead opting to schedule meetings with the Chinese oppressors of the true Church.
I’ve mentioned before, I’m a Cuban-American ex-pat that lives in Brazil. The situation here is very sad. Many times Mass seems like an Pentecostal revival. The priest dances up and down the aisle. Deacons say back and forth, literally clap their hands and stomp their feet. Priests use an Evangelical style of “shouting” during their sermons. Nonetheless, it is very common to see a handful, a very small handful, of faithful who still remain ‘true’, women who cover their heads, people who receive communion kneeling (and sometimes we are refused, or asked to stand, before receiving), those who will not participate in the “clapping ” and hootin’ and hollerin’ that takes place. You touch on it, but the problem here is that “liberation theology” has done much harm. Anything the slightest bit “traditional” is viewed as a “tool to keep down the masses”.
How’s that offshore oil exploration and drilling working out for the Chinese? They can see sugarloaf from where they are.