Priest from Vatican Secretariat finds constitution no protection

Persecution in China grows official claims
CHINA is behaving toward the Catholic Church in a manner that makes reconciliation between the two almost impossible, says a Vatican official who specializes in church relations with China.
The official, Fr Joseph Spae, a consultor to the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christians, said Chinese Catholics are undergoing a persecution that has intensified in recent years.
Fr Spae, a Missionary of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, worked in Mongolia prior to World War II and is a survivor of wartime Japanese concentration camps.
China's constitution provides that "Chinese may enjoy freedom of religion, free from foreign domination and under state protection, and that's where the venom lies,' said Fr Spae. Under state protection" has been interpreted by the communist government to mean that worship can only take place in state approved churches, he said.
Chinese Catholics are in the same situation as English Catholics in the 16th century "when Catholics by being Catholics were unconstitutional," said the Belgianborn priest.
To assert state control over the Church the Chinese government has established the National Association of Patriotic Catholics, Fr Spae said, dividing Catholics into a camp loyal to the Vatican and a camp loyal to the patriotic association.
Belonging to the patriotic association are 48 bishops, five of them recently consecrated, he said. "Forty-six bishops are validly but illicitly consecrated. Two of the bishops were consecrated with the permission of Rome before the (communist) takeover. All the bishops who are free belong to the
patriotic church." The Chinese communists came to power in 1949.
"There are, as far as we know, two bishops who are in jail for more than 25 years," Fr Spae added. "One of them is Bishop Ignatius Kung Ping-Mel of Shanghai. He has been in jail for 28 years. The other is a bishop from Mongolia."
"Many of the illegally consecrated bishops were forced to marry," said the Vatican official. "They had to go through a civil ceremony which they probably could not avoid. They were all priests. I'm not saying they're living with their so-called wives," Fr Spae said.
One of China's 48 bishops repudiated the patriotic assocation and ordained 53 priests outside that church, he said. The bishop was jailed, tortured and died a martyr, the priest said. "The majority of priests remain overwhelmingly loyal to Rome," he added.
"Ninety per cent of the faithful remain loyal to Rome and refuse to have any dealings with the patriotic priests, although in order to receive the sacraments some will go to churches staffed by patriotic priests," he said.
"Contrary to all expectations and to what we thought two years ago, the number of Catholics loyal to Rome has increased by leaps and bounds. While we know that the number of Catholics at the time of liberation in 1949 was 3.9 million, it stands now, according to our best calculations, at between 5 million and 6 million," the Vatican official claimed.
"Therefore, we feel that a new type of Church is being born under extremely adverse circumstances and it will read a lesson to the Church universal on account of its courage, Inventiveness and practice of new ministries by the laity."
said. "We watch with particular rapture the role of women in that Church because it is really the women who, being less suspect and enjoying greater freedom, have kept the Church alive. especially the sisters."