Wednesday, April 04, 2012

A China that calls to Jesus

In the “Celestial Empire,” the faith is undergoing an unexpected “building boom” - powered and controlled by the authorities - as part of a plan, imposed from above, that sees the proliferation of places of worship as a precious “instrumentum regni” - a tool of state control. 

From a less-than-disinterested perspective, faith is being used as a tool to keep people subjugated (in the sense that the historian Polybius reserved for the religion of the Roman people) and as a “multiplier” of productive potential for the Asian country. 

“There is a great need for places of worship in China, and the authorities know that Christians do not make revolutions. Thus they are very happy to allow the building of churches,” explains sinologist Father Bernardo Cervellera (Director of AsiaNews, the news agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions [PIME]) to “Vatican Insider.” 

According to the Chinese authorities, Christian morality not only ensures the proliferation of “good citizens,” but also a work ethic that is economically useful to the country.

The difference between Christians and other workers is that “when they make a mistake, they feel guilty.” 

The shortage of places of worship, Father Cervellera emphasizes, “is particularly felt by the unofficial Protestant community.” 

In fact, China is home to “more than 50 million underground Protestants, and about 8 million underground Catholics.” 

“The Chinese government’s offensive mainly targets Protestant communities, who must either meet in a single official church or be dissolved with only the pastors remaining,” says Father Cervellera. 

“The problem is figuring out how far this plan to build places of worship actually extends - so far in Beijing they have built a Catholic and a Protestant church. But meanwhile, many other Christian places of worship are being destroyed,” Father Cervellera points out, demonstrating “a leadership undergoing a crisis of values.” 

He adds: “Even the leaders of the Communist Party don’t believe in Marxism anymore, while Chinese society is becoming increasingly materialistic. These same party members are turning to religions and religious authorities rather than allowing uncontrolled religions to build controlled churches.” 

But the issue is far from resolved. “Protestants do not want to go churches controlled by the party, and they are accusing the official religious community of idolatry, that is, putting the party in the place of God. And they believe that building new houses of worship is not a sign of liberalism, but the desire for more control over believers.” 

With regard to Catholics, however, “as a controlled religion,” the Pope’s missive - the letter addressed by Pope Benedict XVI “to the bishops, priests, consecrated persons and lay faithful of the Catholic Church in China” – is still binding.
 
The pontifical document - 54 pages and 20 chapters long in the Italian version - provides guidance on Church life and on the work of evangelization in China, responding to numerous requests received by the Holy See. 

In this guiding text, Father Cervellera says, some fundamental parameters are set: “Bishops are chosen by Rome, and Chinese Catholics are encouraged to thus provide their contribution to the common good of society; subject, however, to their sphere of autonomy with the necessary freedom of expression.” 

Meanwhile, in the “supermarket” of Chinese religious and political beliefs, we are witnessing a “falling of the idols” beneath ideological appearances. In recent years, the Communist Party has increasingly moved away from the ideals of Mao. 

The admission of red capitalists to the management of power, the defence of private property, and the economic opening to unbridled capitalism has created discontent among the masses - millions of workers who are suffering layoffs and the cancellation of health and welfare benefits. 

For many, Mao has become an ideal - a god to pray to, but above all a way to criticize the present regime. 

In the countryside, abuse and corruption by “comrades” have led to a 75% decrease in Party enrolments, attacks on Party offices, and violent clashes between peasants and police.
  
“The ideological mortgage on historiography and journalism in China has severely limited the publicizing of stories of Christian persecution and martyrdom,” Gerolamo Fazzini emphasizes in the introduction to the “Red Book of Chinese Martyrs” (St. Paul). 

“After decades of ideology-laced propaganda, a ‘demystification of Mao,’ who was responsible for crimes equal or greater to those of Stalin and Hitler - eighty million deaths during the ‘Great Leap Forward,’ 1958-61 - is finally approaching.” 

The director of “World and Mission,” one of the oldest missionary magazines in Europe, goes on to say: “Without detracting from the singularity of the Holocaust or diminishing the severity of Stalin’s strategy, according to the numbers, Mao is guilty of decisions that produced true mass slaughter. On the one hand, the ‘Great Helmsman’ pursued a plan to eliminate all counterrevolutionaries (political opponents, intellectuals, believers, etc.); on the other, a series of ideological campaigns (which included forced industrialization and the dismantling of the traditional rural matrix) produced disastrous social results: the abandonment of fields, famines.” 

All of this has been documented in “The Revolution of Hunger” by Jasper Becker, and, more recently, the monumental biography by Jung Chang, “Mao, the Unknown Story,” which documents a historical nightmare scenario.