梵中密約、上帝無神

【Comment】

According to the news report below, the Vatican lost all its bargaining chips just for Beijing’s acknowledgement of the Pope as the head of the world Catholic Church in return. 

The pope will be the Church head without even nominal veto power in history.

中國國務院宗教事務局提出主教人選，交由教區神職人員以及信徒代表以「民主選舉」方式票決，投票結果送審核後，再透過外交管道提交教宗，教宗有數月可調查，若教宗予以否決，雙方將展開對話，以期提出新人選。

中梵主教協議簽定了 陳日君轟背叛    自由20180922

梵蒂岡預定本月底派代表團前往北京，與中國簽署主教任命協議。香港樞機主教陳日君廿日以背叛天主教信仰為由，呼籲該協議首席談判長、教廷國務卿帕羅林（Pietro Parolin）下台。

陳日君認為，梵中雙方進行「秘密交易」，教廷「正將羊群送入虎口，這是難以置信的背叛」、「完全的投降」，他說，帕羅林「應該辭職」。「我不認為他有信仰，他只是世俗意義下的好外交官」。他說，教廷不了解中國國家主席習近平的意圖，該協議將進一步重創整個天主教會的威信，並產生長遠的悲慘後果。

中國約一千兩百萬的天主教徒分裂為效忠教廷的「地下教會」，以及由國家監督的「中國天主教愛國會」。陳日君認為，約一半的地下教會將接受該協議，另一半「我擔心他們會進行一些非理性、反抗的事」。

據紐約耶穌會刊物「美國（America）」引用消息來源報導，該協議為臨時性質，可能數年後進行修改，儘管教宗方濟各承認「這不是好協議」，但卻是「開啟與這個崛起的世界超級強權發展建設性及促進對話之門」的唯一可能方式。

報導說，即便雙方簽署協議，相關文本仍不會公開。然而根據消息來源，雙方對主教任命程序達成協議，據此，中國國務院宗教事務局提出主教人選，交由教區神職人員以及信徒代表以「民主選舉」方式票決，投票結果送審核後，再透過外交管道提交教宗，教宗有數月可調查，若教宗予以否決，雙方將展開對話，以期提出新人選。

Cdl. Zen calls for Vatican secretary of state Parolin to ‘resign’ over ‘betrayal’ in China deal    LifeSite 20180921

HONG KONG, September 21, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong is calling for the Vatican secretary of state to resign over the Holy See’s impending deal with China that he says is “an incredible betrayal.”

Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who is considered papabile, was chief negotiator in the agreement that is expected to be finalized when a Vatican delegation travels to China at the end of this month, according to AsiaNews.

America Magazine reported Tuesday a Vatican source confirmed “a high-level Holy See delegation will travel to the Chinese capital for the signing and that a date has already been fixed for this ground-breaking event.”

What is known of the deal, first referred to in February 2017, is that Beijing will acknowledge the pope as head of the Catholic Church in China but will have final say in appointing bishops, although the pope has a veto.

The Vatican has agreed to recognize and consecrate seven illegitimate “bishops” installed by the communist-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association and which the Holy See had previously rejected.

The Vatican has also requested, as part of the agreement, that two bishops from the persecuted Underground church step down in favor of “bishops” from the Patriotic church.

Zen has consistently fiercely opposed what is being hailed in some progressive quarters as a landmark agreement re-establishing diplomatic relations between Beijing and the Holy See after 70 years.

“They’re giving the flock into the mouths of the wolves. It’s an incredible betrayal,” the 86-year-old retired bishop of Hong Kong told Reuters in an interview published Thursday.

Signing a deal with Beijing’s atheistic regime undermines the Pope’s credibility, added Zen.

The deal comes as President Xi Jinping is ruthlessly cracking down on religious freedom. Beijing issued regulations February 1 banning unauthorized religious activity, forbidding children and party members from entering churches, non-registered clergy from holding religious services, and mandating “all religious sites must be registered.”

“The consequences will be tragic and long lasting, not only for the church in China, but for the whole church because it damages the credibility,” Zen told Reuters.

Zen told Reuters that Parolin, the Vatican’s highest diplomat, doesn’t seem to have high regard for the Catholic faith.

“I don’t think he has faith. He is just a good diplomat in a very secular, mundane meaning,” Zen said.

“He should resign,”  he added.  “It’s a complete surrender … I have no other words.”

Parolin was named by former U.S. nuncio Archbishop Carlo Viganò also in his explosive August testimony. Viganò alleges the secretary of state was among the high-ranking prelates who covered up the serial sexual abuse of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

“As Nuncio to Washington, I wrote to Cardinal Parolin asking him if the sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict were still valid,” Viganò wrote. “Ça va sans dire that my letter never received any reply!”

Parolin has also defended the pope's controversial document on the family Amoris laetitia as a "paradigm shift" for the Church.

Zen traveled to Rome in January to warn Pope Francis of the deal after the news broke the Holy See was asking two Underground bishops to step aside for state-endorsed prelates.

Cardinal Zen has long mistrusted Parolin, warning Pope Francis in 2013 that when it came to China, his newly appointed to secretary of state “has a poisoned mind. He is very sweet, but I have no trust in this person. He believes in diplomacy, not in our faith,” he told Crux at that time.

But Francis nevertheless directed Parolin to re-establish negotiations with Beijing — which Benedict broke off before he resigned — and try to broker an agreement, Crux reported.

China expert Steve Mosher, head of Population Research Institute and author of Bully of Asia, accuses Parolin of making enormous blunders in China, which will be paid for by the country’s persecuted Catholics.

Parolin’s blunders began in 2005 when as a high-ranking diplomat he established direct contact with Beijing “with the goal of signing a written agreement with the atheistic regime over the appointment of bishops,” Mosher wrote in One Peter Five.

At this point, China’s estimated 12 million Catholics had settled into a far from ideal but “workable” solution to overcome the painful divide between the Underground church and the Communist-run Patriotic church.

In the general amnesty declared after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Underground bishops and priests imprisoned for decades for refusing to join the Patriotic church were released, and began evangelizing throughout China, wrote Mosher.

“By common agreement” the Communist Party and agents, although an ever-present “brooding, hostile” presence, were “kept out of the local arrangements that allowed Catholics from both [Patriotic and Underground churches] to coexist, even cooperate.”

Underground bishops, “with the permission of the Vatican, named their own successors. The Patriotic Association named its own bishops, but these then almost always sought, and almost always got, consecration by the pope,” Mosher observed.

But when Parolin came seeking negotiations, that essentially “put a target on the backs of Chinese Catholics. The ‘space’ in which it had operated began to shrink under the unblinking eye of state surveillance.”

And in Parolin’s current quest for an agreement, “not surprisingly, Beijing has gone for the jugular: the complete extinction of the Underground Church, starting with its bishops,” Mosher pointed out.

“This is why we have recently been treated to the heartbreaking spectacle of 88-year-old Underground bishop Peter Zhuang being forced, by Cardinal Parolin’s emissaries, to hand over his Shantou diocese to excommunicated Patriotic bishop Huang Bingzhang,” he wrote.

“This is also why a younger Patriotic bishop, Joseph Guo of Fujian province, has been demoted to be an assistant to an illegitimate Patriotic bishop,” added Mosher.

“This process will obviously continue until the last of the 30-odd Underground bishops have been sidelined and silenced, one way or another.”