ONLINE NEWSLETTER

December 2006   

Dear Friends:

Fifteen years ago during one of my visits to the late Bishop Walter Curtis, the retired bishop of Bridgeport, I updated him on the events regarding the underground Catholic Church in China.  He became rather annoyed and blurted out: “What is the use of telling me these things everyday?” I was caught totally off-guard, not knowing how to defend myself. I replied that I thought that he was interested in the underground Church.  He then softened up and smiled.  “Joe, why should I be the only one to know these very important happenings?  I alone could not do much.  There are about 450 bishops, thousands of priests and nuns, and millions of Catholics in the United States, and many, many more throughout the world.  They all need to know the atrocities against the Catholics in China.  What are you doing to let them know?” I had no answer for Bishop Curtis.  Bishop took me across the hall to see Cardinal Kung immediately. With Cardinal’s approval, Bishop Curtis guided me with patience and determination to start the Cardinal Kung Foundation. Bishop not only initiated the idea, he wrote a personal check for $5,000 as the seed money to start the Foundation. The Cardinal was very pleased when the Cardinal Kung Foundation was registered in Connecticut in November 1991 and was approved as a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization in 1992.

Today, 15 years later, through our radio and TV appearances, testimonies before US and overseas government committees, speeches before parishes, Catholic societies and schools, many press releases to major media outlets throughout the world, newspaper articles, and the Foundation’s newsletter and website, literally millions of people around the globe learned about Cardinal Kung and the continued persecution of the underground Church in China. Through the Foundation, our donors were able to directly partner with the underground Church in its pastoral missions. With love and sacrifice, our donors, together with other organizations, are supporting more than 200 religious both in China and overseas to pursue their higher education. These are the future leaders of the underground Church. Some of them already have completed their Masters and Ph.D.s and have since returned working in the underground Church. Our donors request thousands of Masses to be offered by the underground priests. To many underground priests, these Mass stipends are their only financial resources to continue their pastoral work or studies. We are the primary benefactor of 100 handicapped orphans in China.  We support many convents in their daily living expenses and the nuns’ medical costs. Our donors have financially adopted approximately180 novices during their four years of formation. Most important of all, through our various prayer programs, friends of the Foundation could spiritually support the underground Church and in particular many underground bishops and clergy. We pray that they will have strength and wisdom to continue their sacred duties. On behalf of the underground Church, we thank you profoundly.

Due to trade relations between the United States and China as well as the religious nature of our work, the Cardinal Kung Foundation has not received financial support from other foundations.  Neither has the Cardinal Kung Foundation received funding from the Catholic Church or major religious communities.  Our work is financed by individual donors like you.  For the last few years, our donations are down.  Possibly due to personal economic situations, many of our donors have reduced their donations significantly. A few major donors are now deceased.  In the meantime, our work, particularly in the education of priests, seminarians and nuns, has significantly increased.  We are in a critical time because most of the underground clergy are elderly and urgently need an entire generation of new leaders. Rather than curtailing these very critical programs, the Cardinal Kung Foundation has been operating in a deficit condition for the last few years in order to keep these programs going. This deficit cannot continue for long for obvious reasons.  If you can increase your donation this Christmas and in the coming year, I plead with you to do so.  May I offer you a few Christmas gift ideas?  A $10 Mass stipend for a Mass is invaluable to your friend/family and a subsistent help to an underground priest.  You may have friends/relatives who need prayers for serious situations. Why not give a gift of continuous prayer support from a novice (Read below Adoption of Novice Nun program) so that his/her needs would be prayed for daily by this novice. The underground Church truly needs your help, and needs the help now.  You know the Lord will never forget your generosity.

Everyday, the underground clergy and religious pray with deep gratitude for our donors, without whose prayers and sacrificial financial support, it would be most difficult to continue many programs for the underground Church.  In addition, we offer approximately 100 Masses each year for our benefactors.

Please continue to pray that, through our efforts, together with those of yours and others, one day there will be true religious freedom in China , diplomatic relations will be established between China and the Vatican , and those brothers and sisters who chose to be separated from the Pontiff will return to one fold and one Shepherd. There is much more work that need to be done.  But right now, let us pause a moment and wish each other a Happy Birthday!

A Letter from a Supporter of the Underground Church in China:

Dear Joseph and Agnes Kung:

Please keep the little St. Faustina Club in your prayers this weekend. We are putting on a Chinese Shadow Puppet Show on Sunday (11/12/06) at 3 PM in order to learn more about China. In between the three puppet shows entitled The Frog Prince, Minsheng (the Chinese Robin Hood), and Lon Po Po (the Chinese Little Red Riding Hood), the girls will give public service announcements about the suffering Church in China. These two-to-five minute talks are: Catholic and Protestant Church destruction in China as well as information about persecution of Christians, Our Lady of China, The Story of Cardinal Kung, the Miraculous visit of the BVM in China, a list read aloud of the imprisoned bishops of China, and St Anna Wang. This will all be followed by a Chinese dinner cooked by the 20 girls aged 10 - 18 years old and served to 65 family members and their guests. Before dinner we will pray the Hail Mary in Chinese.

I am sending you this little note in the hope that it will encourage you in some small way……We had a practice yesterday and prayed for the intercession of Cardinal Kung for my health and that of all 20 girls. Many are coughing. Several are coughing pretty badly, like me. My faith is strong enough to realize that we must push forward no matter what happens.

I hope you receive much hope and encouragement in hearing about our struggles…..I wish to thank you again for the wonderful care package you sent before with the holy cards and other items. They are all being put to very good use. May God bless you abundantly.

Sandra 11/10/2006

It is by these efforts that the children, who grew up in America, not knowing too much about the value of freedom of religion, can learn to pray for mission countries, and for the end of religious persecution in China and elsewhere. They thereby strengthen our faith. Thank you a million, Sandra.

We designated October 1 or the Sunday closest to October 1 as the Annual Mass Sunday for the persecuted underground Roman Catholic Church in China. Through the love and generosity of our readers, approximately 200 Masses were offered on that Sunday this year in parishes across America and in some parts of Europe for our brothers and sisters in the underground Roman Catholic Church in China. The next annual Mass will be on September 30, 2007. As the Mass schedule is always scheduled well in advance, it is not too early for you to book this Mass NOW in your parish. Your $10 offering to your parish for this Mass will speak eloquently an important message for your pastor and parishioners when the underground Church has no voice of its own. Thank you.

We announced in July 2005 a program for readers to adopt underground novice nuns in China. For 55 US Cents a day, or $100 for 6 months, or $200 for one year, you can adopt a novice who will pray for you every day for your intention for the period of the adoption. In the meantime, you will support a novice for her living expenses during that period. Your intention could include, to name a few, the conversion of a relative or friend, the return of a family member to the sacraments, the recovery from serious illness, the repose of the souls of your loved ones, employment, a happy marriage and others. We will send your name and your intention to the novice and will also send the novice name to you. We started this program a little more than one year ago in July 2005, and had received approximately 180 adoptions of nuns spread over more than ten convents across China. Many of those who have adopted novices for more than a year have renewed their adoptions. However, some of them have dropped out. As a result, we have approximately 30 novices who have lost their sponsorships and are in need of being adopted by you. All you need is to send us a check of $100 or $200, marking it restricted for novice adoption. We hope that the donation for adopting these novices will be in addition to your regular donations to this Foundation.

If you are age 70 ½ or more and are required to take an IRA minimum distribution, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 offers a new tax break if you donate directly from your IRA account to a public charity. It is important to note that, in order to qualify, the donation must be a direct roll-over sent from your IRA custodian directly to the qualified charity. This change is especially helpful to those who do not need to take distributions from their IRA, but are required to do so.

You will be able to distribute up to $100,000 of your IRA balance to charitable organizations in both 2006 and 2007 without recognizing income and without taking a charitable contribution. Additionally, the distribution counts toward the required minimum distribution from you IRA. This is a great opportunity for those seniors who do not itemize deductions as it allows them to exclude the donation from the income created by the required IRA minimum distribution. Additionally, this distribution can have estate benefits as it will save enormous taxes on IRAs which would otherwise remain in an individual's estate.

The Internal Revenue Service is offering this tax break in 2006 and 2007 only. While this has been hailed as a major tax break for American seniors age 70 ½ or older, you should first consult your tax advisor or accountant to determine if this charitable IRA donation is appropriate for you. If you intend to take advantage of this tax break to support your favorite charities, I hope that you will keep in mind the needs of the underground Church in China. Thank you.

Perhaps one of the hottest topics circulating in the Vatican is the possible establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Vatican. A year ago on April 7, I wrote an op-ed article in the Asian Wall Street Journal on this subject. You can download this article from our website.

Recently, another article about China-Vatican relations was circulated by Taiwan's Embassy to the Holy See. It questions the logic of this diplomatic effort. I have re-edited the article according to the original text. This article is reprinted below for your perusal.

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Joseph Kung
President

Reprinted with the permission of the author. The toned-down version of this article was published by Taiwan's Catholic Life Weekly, a Chinese-language weekly newspaper published by the Diocese of Taipei in Taiwan, on August 13, 2006. The same article (the toned down version) was translated into English and Italian. It was distributed to selected people by the Embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the Holy See. The following article is by and large originally translated by the said Embassy and is re-edited by the Cardinal Kung Foundation to keep the flavor and verbiage of the original article before it was toned down by the editors of the Catholic Life Weekly and the Embassy. The message and position conveyed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of this Foundation. The article is printed here for readers' information due to its importance.

According to Asia News reports, two weeks ago a Vatican delegation, including Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli and Monsignor Gianfranco Rota Graziosi of the Vatican Secretariat of State, traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese authorities. During the visit, the Vatican delegation clearly stated the Holy See's position. However, the results of the talks were not disclosed.

Cardinal Joseph Z. K. Zen, bishop of Hong Kong, said that the main stumbling block in China-Vatican relations is the respect for religious freedom. Furthermore, Asia News declared that religious freedom in China has been seriously violated: more than ten bishops and priests are still in jail, and the government-created official Church is strictly controlled by both the Patriotic Association and the police. This situation creates significant problems for the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two parties. Asia News also reported that Pope Benedict XVI had shown his sincere desire to formalize relations with Beijing's China in order to obtain religious freedom for the Chinese people.

All these reports give the impression that the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and the Holy See is imminent. However, before embracing this conclusion, it is necessary to review the history of the severing of relations between China and the Holy See to ascertain whether both parties truly intend to establish such relations. It is also necessary to evaluate whether the future establishment of such relations will be indeed a happy event or rather a sad tragedy.

1. When were the relations between China and the Vatican severed? In 1949, when Chinese communists gained power on Mainland China, how did they treat all religions, and particularly the Catholic Church? In September 1951 Archbishop Antonio Riberi, then apostolic internuncio in China, was expelled by Chinese authorities; after that, in June 1953, all foreign religious were expelled from the country. Meanwhile, the government started to organize different campaigns in order to arrest many priests and faithful. In addition, the government gave rise to the autonomous Three Movements of the local church, whose objective was to force the Chinese Catholic Church to become independent of Rome. Strong pressure was put on Shanghai's Bishop Ignatius Pin-Mei Kung in the hope that he would lead these Three Movements. Despite all this, in those five years the Chinese government did not get the intended result of annihilating the Catholic Church. Rather, the Catholic Church in China grew even stronger.

The Chinese government realized that neither smooth nor harsh manners would lead to its desired effect. It decided to enact drastic measures: dreaming to destroy the Shanghai Diocese in one night once and for all. During the night of September 8, 1955, the police arrested the beloved Bishop Kung and most of the priests and seminarians, as well as many faithful. They also imposed a 10-day ultimatum to force the members of the Legion of Mary to resign from the Legion and to register with the government. Those who did not follow orders were put in jail on September 26 of the same year. During this turmoil, more than 1,000 people were detained, among them religious and faithful. From that moment on, a movement against the Catholic Church spread throughout all of China. At the end of that year, more than 3,000 Catholics were arrested. In spite of this, the Church in China remained unwavering.

Since these measures did not bring about the desired effect, in 1957 the Chinese communist government decided to proclaim the independence of the Chinese Catholic Church from the Pope and the Holy See. It founded in the same year the Patriotic Association, a political organization, sustained and controlled by the government, with the objective of managing independently all of the affairs of the Church, including the nomination and consecration of bishops without the authorization of the Pope.

By so doing, the Chinese government intended to divide the Chinese Church and to destroy it completely. Those who did not accept to become members of the Patriotic Association were persecuted in many ways, including the loss of their jobs, the expulsion from school, and even the loss of freedom with detention in jail.

Fifty years have gone by since the severance of the relations between China and the Vatican and since the creation of the Patriotic Association. During this long period of time in China, on the one hand there originated what is called the public or "official" Church, and on the other hand there is the underground or "clandestine" Church, which is faithful to the Pope and to the Holy See. The underground Church is not allowed to have a public Church, it has no freedom, and is persecuted. Hence, it is forced to go underground. 

Over the last 50 years, numerous bishops, priests and faithful have endured blood and tears without any fear of persecution. They have chosen the cross in order to profess their faithfulness to the universal Church and to the Roman Pontiff, Vicar of Christ. Living under the façade of religious freedom, regulated by the Chinese constitution, they prefer detention, forced labor - not for one or two years, rather for ten, twenty or more years. These are the historical facts.

2. Establishing diplomatic relations: Is it the Vatican who wants to establish diplomatic relations with communist China? Or is it communist China who wishes to do so? Or do both parties wish for this to come true?

The Vatican really has the intention to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing's China. Its important goal is to obtain real religious freedom for Chinese Catholics. This means that the communist Chinese government will have to abolish the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. This means that the communist Chinese government will have to promise never to persecute the Roman Catholic Church again. This means that the communist Chinese government will have to guarantee freedom of religious belief and practice in its national constitutions.

The Vatican truly wishes to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese government, but should never retreat from its principles. There is no religious freedom for the Roman Catholic Church in the Chinese mainland. This is evident from its continuous persecution. Establishing diplomatic relations with China should not be the first objective for the Vatican. The first objective of the Vatican should be holding fast to its principles. The Vatican understands clearly that even during their most difficult period, the faithful of the Roman Catholic Church in China never swayed from its loyalty to the Vatican and its faithfulness to the Church. 

Whether establishing diplomatic relations between the Vatican and China is successful is not the key issue. The key issue is to support and encourage the faithful to persevere in their faith and to remain loyal and in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

 Does communist China wish to establish relations with the Vatican? Only communist China knows. In principle, communist China must give its citizens true religious freedom, abolish the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, and recognize the Holy See's right to choose and nominate its bishops, as is the case in all the other countries in the world.

3. Will it be a happy event deserving to be congratulated or a tragedy? If, some day, we read from the headlines of all the newspapers in the world the great news that China has established diplomatic relations with the Holy See, please do not get too excited too early. If communist China will really do what the Chinese proverb expresses - "lay down its butcher knife and become a Buddha" - we will then be entitled to be very happy, because it would truly be a happy event deserving to be congratulated.

On the contrary, if communist China uses diplomatic relations between China and the Vatican as a trick to achieve its secret objective, that would be a real tragedy.

On the eve of the Great Jubilee of 2000, it seemed that the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and the Holy See was about to come true. However, suddenly everything came to a halt as if a balloon exploded and a stone sank to the bottom of the sea. Some time later, the news reported that in August of the previous year, that was in 1999, the Chinese government had circulated a secret document entitled "Document 817" within the Party. This document contained the principles set forth below according to which China would have established relations with the Holy See.

1. The Holy See would not have been allowed to interfere in China's internal affairs,

2. The Patriotic Association's power would have been strengthened to force the underground Church in China to submit to the position of the government, 

3. It would have ensured that the Patriotic Association effectively controlled and guided the Catholic Church in China, 

4. It would have been necessary to defeat the Vatican's plan of taking advantage of its authoritative position in the universal Church to control China's Catholic Church. 

5. Chinese bishops would not have been chosen, nominated and consecrated by Rome, but rather by the Chinese government, and 

6. Once the diplomatic relations were established, it would have been necessary to solve immediately the issues related to underground bishops and priests who had not yet yielded to the position of the government.

The entire document 817 is only a bit more than three pages long. If you read the entire text, it will cause "your blood to run cold" because it is not difficult to detect the policy that communist China has had for the Catholic Church all along.

Awakened by that bad dream, last June the Vatican sent two emissaries to Beijing. While they were negotiating with Chinese authorities, the Chinese government could have just slightly expressed its sincerity by releasing earlier than scheduled some of its jailed bishops and priests who have to be released anyway sooner or later. However, the very opposite occurred. The central government's Office for Religious Affairs dragged away Bishop Jia Zhi-Guo, the 72 year old bishop of Zhendin, from the hospital where he had undergone surgery. No one knows where he is to this day. Monsignor Jia had already spent 20 years in jail. He had just had an operation and was recuperating in the hospital when he was arrested and dragged away by the Chinese authorities. In spite of the banner of freedom of religion in its constitution, the Chinese authorities dragged an elderly bishop away right after his operation. Isn't there any humanity left? (From the editor of the Cardinal Kung Foundation: Bishop Jia has since been released by Chinese authority on September 25, 2006 )

If communist China does not release all jailed Catholic bishops, priests, and faithful, the Vatican should not return to the negotiation table, period!

There is a Chinese proverb: "Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat." A happy event, of course, deserves to be congratulated, but a tragedy is more sorrowful.

Please Remember The Cardinal Kung Foundation In Your Will.
Thank You.