The ordination of another Chinese bishop without papal approval would
be a “new step backwards” in relations between China and the Vatican,
says Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, the secretary of the Congregation for
the Evangelization of Peoples.
“The government and Chinese
politicians are convinced that the Church must be managed by the
government,” the Hong Kong-born cleric told the Italian newspaper La
Stampa on July 12.
Archbishop Hon Tai-Fai’s comments were made
only two days before Father Joseph Huang Binzhuang is due to be
illicitly ordained as the bishop of Shantou diocese in the southern
province of Guangdong on Thursday July 14.
The ordination will be
the third without papal approval in nine months.
Each has been
organized by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which is run by
Beijing and does not acknowledge the authority of the Pope.
“Certainly,
with the illegitimate ordinations of November 2010 and this past 29
June, the government took some steps backward, going back to the
situation during the ‘50s,” said Archbishop Hon Tai-Fai.
“They
wanted bishops ordained under the control of the government. This
surprises me, as we have taken so many steps forward to bring us closer
together.”
Archbishop Hon Tai-Fai says he believes that the
Catholic Church has become an indirect casualty of internal communist
party politics.
“Within the Politburo, the top leaders are all
doing their jobs. There are still 18 months before some big changes
happen in China. Hu Jintao, President and Secretary General of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party, must be replaced. So to save
themselves, everyone tries to be as leftward-leaning as possible, taking
an ever-more intransigent position. It is a subtle form of electoral
campaigning.”
Today’s interview comes only a week after the
Vatican warned Catholic bishops who participated in another illicit
episcopal ordination in the Diocese of Leshan in June that they could be
facing excommunication.
Archbishop Hon Tai-Fai explained that
some of the bishops involved have already written to Rome to explain
“the pressure they were under” or that they “were forced to do it.”
Others, however, “have returned to their dioceses as if nothing
happened,” thus “creating disturbances among the faithful.” For both, he
says, penance is now required.
“They must apologize to the people
of God, offering a day of prayer and penitence in their diocese. This
way they can recover their credibility and so continue to govern their
diocese.”
Canon 1382 of the Catholic Church's Code of Canon Law
states both a bishop who “without a pontifical mandate, consecrates a
person as Bishop, and the one who receives the consecration from him,
incur a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication reserved to the
Apostolic See.”