Mao Tse-Tung's 'Parlour':

`CHINESE CATHOLICS' PATRIOTIC
ASSOCIATION 9 411JST as Chinese Protestants have thrown off their ties with Protestant Churches overseas at the insistence of China's Red rulers, so now Mao Tse-Tung tries to unite Catholics on a " patriotic " basis with the end of ultimate divorce from Rome.
China's Red Press goes so far as to say that bishops and priests are co-operating in forming a "government-controlled Catholic Church". This is denied by Bishop Bianchi, of Hong-Kong, who calls it "propaganda".
And in Rome, the International Fides Agency has warned Chinese Catholics that they must refuse to belong to China's " Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics," which is government-sponsored. The ban is due to the fact that the Association is under the control of the Communist Party.
A "NATIONAL" conference
of 240 Catholics — bishops, priests, nuns and laymen opened in Peking on June 17, for the establishment of a
" Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics." The Communists have for long tried to seduce Catholics by means of this type of body.
The conference had been announced only in periodicals published by the 'oral Patriotic Association of Catholics. No announcement appeared in the ordinary Press. The only reference to it in agency Press reports was contained in a brief Associated Press bulletin. It said that the conference was being held, with 11 Bishops taking part. This number appears to be much in excess of that given in reports from Catholic sources
CENTRALIZATION
All religious bodies come under the Cabinet Administration for Religious Affairs, which is headed by Ho Ch'eng-Hsian. The Party, a more important organisation than the Cabinet. lumps religious bodies with the Democratic Parties and other non-Parts, organisations, and puts them all under the authority of the United Front Department of the Central Committee, The Polish Catholic weekly newspaper, Tygodnik Powszechny. which did not appear the week before last, was published again last week, explaining that it had not been printed in protest against a Government ban on the publication of a message from the Cardinal Primate banning the "Pax Movement."
With return fare at 18s, 9d., a train will leave Liverpool St. Station, London, on Sunday, August 18, at 9.18 a.m., arriving at Walsingham 1.10 p.m.. in time for the Pilgrimage being held on that day. Return journey is at 5.55, with arrival London 9.57.
On July 26, 1956, the Red leader Chou En-Lai, who specialises in approaches to Christians, because of a past association with the Y.M.C.A., invited 38 people to a preparatory meeting. from which an organising body was set up.
The Catholics are the last religious body to establish an official national committee of the type that.organised this conference.
" CONCESSIONS"
AFTER the events in Hungary, and following upon the famous Mao speech, the Party made it known that it felt that some " concessions " should he made both to Protestants and to Catholics. At a meeting, Mgr. Wang Wen-Chang, Bishop of Nanchung, Szechan province, and Tung Wan-Lung, Vicar-General of Tsina city, Shatung province, are said to have been brought to "admit" that "the three millionodd Chinese Catholics are a part of the People's Democratic United Front."
A Hong Kong report names four Bishops who are said to have taken part in a six-days conference in July 1956. It says that there were nine vicars-general. 12 priests and 11 laymen who also took part in the discussions. It adds that in most cases the ecclesiastical status of the vicars-general is doubtful.
In all, to far as can be established, five Bishops and 25 priests seem to have been drawn into the movement to date. One, at least, of the \priests, had already been excommunicated as a result of his pro-Communist activities.
China's Catholics, priests and laymen alike, have been magnificent in their stand against Communist pressure. But the new and more subtle policies now being initiated by Communists everywhere may in some cases possibly succeed where open terror failed
D.H.