No breakthoughs in relations between Vatican and Beijing, China expert says

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

Perhaps the most influential China-watcher in Rome has cautioned against optimism about breakthroughs in relations between the Vatican and Beijing, saying that current Chinese policy amounts to “preserving control of the church at all costs.”

Fr. Bernardo Cervellera, a member of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions who directs the Rome-based “Asia News” service, said authorities in China today are “deeply worried” about two trends: A burgeoning religious renewal across the country, as well as a growing intersection between human rights activists and forces demanding greater religious freedom.

Cervellera spoke at a conference for journalists sponsored by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, an Opus Dei-run institution in Rome.

A former editor of the Vatican’s “Fides” news service, Cervellera taught in China and has visited the country many times, most recently for the Beijing Olympics. While his comments don’t necessarily reflect Vatican policy, they are taken seriously by senior church officials.

Cervellera said that up and down today’s China, religion is a growth industry.

“Buddhist temples are crowded,” he said. “Taoist monasteries are full of vocations. Christians are actually growing faster than anyone else.”

In particular, Cervellera said, Protestant Christianity is booming, which he attributed to their ability to move without a heavy institutional apparatus and their minimal demands regarding spiritual formation before new members can be accepted – both of which, he said, is in contrast to Catholicism, which is also growing but at a substantially slower pace.

Cervellera traced China’s religious renewal to a breakdown of popular confidence in both old-style Chinese Communism as well as the more recent influence of Capitalism and its ethos of material prosperity and consumer satisfaction. Instead, he said, people today are “looking for spiritual values.”

In itself, Cervellera said, that would be alarming to Chinese authorities, both because it contradicts the official atheism of the Communist party and because it creates a zone of social life beyond the direct control of the state.

What’s making the Chinese additionally nervous, Cervellera said, is what he called the “discovery” of religion, especially Christianity, by human rights activists.

“Up to now, human rights groups have fought for freedom of speech and related civil rights,” he said. More recently, he said, secular NGOs and groups with a specific interest in religious freedom are joining forces, creating a steeper challenge to the government.

In the short term, Cevellera said, all this is likely to push China to assert “more control, not less,” of the Catholic church, thereby delaying progress towards improved ties with Rome. At present, China is one of a handful of countries – including North Korea and Saudi Arabia – with which the Vatican does not have full diplomatic relations.

As proof, Cervellera pointed to the disparity between the religious climate inside the Olympic village during the recent Beijing games and what was happening in the rest of the country.

Inside the village, he said, the various faiths had chapels and shrines available for athletes and visiting dignitaries, and the government went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate their spiritual needs. Israeli President Shimon Peres, he said, was assigned a hotel adjacent to the Olympic village so he could walk to services Friday night without violating the rules of the Jewish Sabbath. Yet Judaism, Cerevellera noted, is not a legally recognized religion in China, so Jews elsewhere in the country cannot even legally attend services.

As for Catholics, Cervellera said that bishops of the “above-ground church,” meaning Catholics who accept some degree of regulation from the state, received letters instructing them not to hold any public events during the Olympic games for reasons of security. If they had any events already on the books, such as Sunday Mass, they were told to keep them brief and under 200 people.

As a result, Cervellera said, some Chinese priests actually omitted the homily from Mass during the Olympics for fear of running afoul of the edict to keep things short.

As for the “underground” church, which spurns any recognition from the government, its leaders were put under wraps. Chinese police built a makeshift barracks in front of the residence of one influential underground bishop who’s under house arrest, Cevellera said, in order to monitor him 24 hours a day.

“They didn’t want foreign journalists to meet someone who could tell them the truth about religious freedom in China,” he said.

Cevellera also described a pattern of duplicity on the part of Chinese officials, who, in his experience, say one thing to the outside world but another for domestic consumption.

In February, Cevellera said, the minister in charge of religious affairs gave an interview to foreign media describing a desire for improved relations with the Vatican; the same official, Cevellera said, told a Chinese newspaper in March that the Vatican is “continuing its policy of colonialism” and that China will never succumb. The content of that latter interview, Cevellera said, reminded him of language used in anti-religious pamphlets from the era of the 1949 Communist takeover.

More generally, Cervellera said the Beijing Olympics produced a false image of modernization and progress in China, which, he argued, stand in contrast to the realities of spreading poverty, environment devastation, and a continuing lack of respect for basic human rights, including religious liberty.

“Dialogue with China,” he said, “is still going to take a lot of time.”