December 2003    Dear Friends:

For Catholics around the world, the celebration of Christmas this year would be incomplete without our expression of gratitude to God for His great gift to the Church of the Pontificate of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, especially as the Holy Father and the entire Church celebrate his 25^th anniversary as Pope. In connection with our expression of gratitude, we at the Cardinal Kung Foundation want to express our complete, unambiguous, and enthusiastic fidelity to the whole of the Magisterium of Pope John Paul II, which is an enormous gift and blessing to the universal Church.

This is no less true for the underground Roman Catholic Church in China. Even while still persecuted by the Chinese communist authorities, and even though often feeling betrayed by those in the universal Church who belittle or deny any significance to the distinction between those in China who remain faithful to the Pope and those who do not, the millions of underground Catholics in China are most grateful to God for Pope John Paul II who, throughout his Pontificate, has expressed his solidarity with them in many ways. We at the Cardinal Kung Foundation join in this gratitude, shared as well by countless numbers of faithful throughout the world.

Perhaps one of the most memorable and important expressions of his solidarity with the underground Roman Catholic Church in China was Pope John Paul II’s elevation of Bishop Ignatius Kung to the College of Cardinals. The Holy Father had done so in pectore in 1979 during the 30-year solitary confinement of Bishop Kung by the Chinese communist government because of his refusal to renounce his fidelity to the Successor of Peter. On May 29, 1991, the Pope announced to the world that Bishop Kung was in fact a Cardinal since 1979. Cardinal Kung died in the United States on March 12, 2000 at the age of 98.

Consistently throughout his Pontificate, Pope John Paul II has both extended his support to the underground Roman Catholic Church in China and upheld the teaching of his Predecessors regarding its unique ecclesial status as being alone, among all the Churches in China, in its full communion with the universal Roman Catholic Church. In a letter to the Chinese faithful in September 1994, the Holy Father puts it in this way: “I am especially close to those who have remained faithful to Jesus Christ and to His Church in the midst of difficulties of all kinds, and continue to testify, even at the cost of deep and prolonged suffering, that the principle of communion with the Successor of Peter…cannot be renounced by a Catholic who desires to remain such and to be recognized as such.”   Such “difficulties of all kinds” and “deep and prolonged suffering” not only continue to this date, but also have worsened. 

In Jan 1995, Pope John Paul again emphasized that “a Catholic who wishes to remain such and to be recognized as such cannot reject the principle of communion with the Successor of Peter.” On Dec 3, 1996, during a Mass for China marking the feast of St. Francis Xavier, the Pope went even further both in underlining the full communion of the underground Roman Catholic Church in China with the universal Roman Catholic Church and distinguishing it clearly from any other Church in China when he said that “[all] Chinese Catholics are called to remain loyal to the faith received and passed on, and not to yield to models of a Church which do not correspond to the will of the Lord Jesus, to the Catholic faith, or to the feelings and convictions of the great majority of Chinese Catholics.” By these “models” the Pope is apparently referring to the Church controlled by the Patriotic Association that, in turn, is controlled by the atheist Chinese government.

Readers would do well to contrast this teaching of the Holy Father with the recent statements of Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. In remarks on the Chinese Catholic Church during an October 28 reception at the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome, the cardinal said: “There is only one Church with two faces.  There is not one ‘patriotic’ Church and one ‘underground’ Church, one legal and the other protesting.”  Rather, he said, the different groups constitute “two faces of the same community, which seeks to be both faithful and at the same time patriotic.” This statement, which contradicts the teaching of Pope John Paul II quoted above, is essentially identical to the one made by Cardinal Jozef Tomko to the U.S. bishops in late Spring of 2001. In the Foundation’s July 2001 and Christmas 2001 Newsletters, I explained the error in Cardinal Tomko’s statement that has now been repeated by Cardinal Etchegaray:

• The cardinals’ statements contradict Pope John Paul II’s teaching quoted above.

• The cardinals’ statements contradict the Church’s Canon Law (751) that schism is the “refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”  Everyone knows that the Patriotic Association’s own fundamental and explicit governing principle is autonomy from the Pope’s administrative, legislative, and judicial authority.

• How can a Church created by an atheist communist government (and intended by that government to replace the Roman Catholic Church in China) be the same Church as the Roman Catholic Church?

• If the two Churches are really the same Church, or, as described by Cardinal Etchegaray, “two faces of the same community,” why is it that one is constantly persecuted while the other is not?

• If they are the same Church, why is the Holy See still negotiating with the communist government of China?

• If they are the same Church, why has Pope John Paul II not recognized the Patriotic Association?

• If they are the same Church, why is it that the Pope, the visible Head of the Roman Catholic Church, is not being allowed to go to China? 

Of course, it is also important to point out that the cardinals’ statements only encourage what we are presently witnessing: the Chinese communist government’s continuing persecution of the underground Roman Catholic Church in China. For example, on Oct 20, 2003, China conducted another systematic arrest of the Roman Catholic Church clergy and seminarians purely because this religious gathering was not sponsored by the government-sanctioned Patriotic Association.  A dozen under- ground Roman Catholic priests and seminarians were attending a religious retreat on that day at Gaocheng County in the district of Shigiazhuang, Hebei.  The government of China raided this peaceful retreat and arrested every one of them present.

On October 1, 2000, Pope John Paul canonized 120 martyrs of China. In his homily at the canonization ceremony, the Holy Father recalled how Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions sealed “their unfailing fidelity to Christ and his Church with the gift of their lives.” He also singled out 33 foreign missionaries among them. “Their tombs are there [in China] as if to signify their definitive belonging to China, which they deeply loved.” On October 2, The Pope met the pilgrims who had come to Rome for the previous day’s canonization ceremony. The Pontiff noted that the majority of the 120 martyrs shed their blood in tragic historical periods marked by violent social disturbances. The Holy Father highlighted the “heroic fidelity of these worthy children of China, who did not let themselves be intimidated by the threats of a ferocious persecution.”  This statement by the Holy Father reminds me of a previous one by him on December 3, 1996. Rejecting any compromise of the Magisterium of the Church, such as the kind implied in the statements by Cardinals Tomko and Etchegaray, Pope John Paul II clearly stated: “The bishop must be the first witness of the faith which he professes and preaches, to the point of ‘shedding his blood’ as the Apostles did and as so many other pastors have done down through the centuries, in many nations and also in China…I exhort all the pastors and the faithful of China to express with courage and without fear the true profession of the Catholic faith, thus ‘speaking the truth in love.’ (Eph. 4:15)” 

By his words about the 120 Chinese martyrs, and in stark contrast to the erroneous statements by Cardinals Tomko and Etchegaray, Pope John Paul II artfully moved those in China who call themselves Catholic but renounce fidelity to the Pope to the uneasy position of distinguishing themselves from those who are in full communion with the universal Roman Catholic Church. On the one hand, the bishops of the Chinese-government-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association condemned the canonizations. On the other hand, they expressed dissatisfaction that they had been left out of the process leading to the canonization of the martyrs. Of course, inclusion in this process would have been possible only if they were in full communion with the universal Roman Catholic Church. In short, they proved unable to be either consistently patriotically Chinese — not only protesting the canonization of their fellow Chinese but also calling them “criminals” — or consistently Catholic — they themselves highlighting their not being in full communion with the Pope and the universal Church.  Their actions betray Cardinal Etchegaray’s claim that they seek “to be faithful and at the same time patriotic.” In contrast, by his canonization of the 120 martyrs, Pope John Paul II demonstrated that being truly Catholic — which includes being in communion with the Pope —  is truly harmonious with being truly patriotically Chinese. 

As we celebrate this Feast of Christmas, let us fervently pray that God’s gift of Pope John Paul II will continue to bring many blessings to the underground Roman Catholic Church in China and to the universal Church.

Wishing you a blessed and happy Christmas.

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Joseph Kung
President

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