Mike Pompeo Op-Ed: China’s Catholics and the Church’s Moral Witness

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
(Photo: Creative Commons)

(Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Op-Ed — Sept. 20, 2020)

In the Op-Ed*, published September 18, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote:

The human rights situation in China has deteriorated severely under the autocratic rule of Xi Jinping, especially for religious believers. Credible reports have exposed the Chinese Communist Party’s program of forced sterilizations and abortions of Muslims in Xinjiang, its abuse of Catholic priests and laypeople, and its assault on Protestant house churches—all of which are parts of a “Sinicization” campaign to subordinate God to the Party while promoting Xi himself as an ultra-mundane deity. Now more than ever, the Chinese people need the Vatican’s moral witness and authority in support of China’s religious believers.

Vatican diplomats are meeting this month with their CCP counterparts to negotiate the renewal of a two-year-old provisional agreement between the Holy See and China. The terms of that pact have never been publicly disclosed; but the Church’s hope was that it would improve the condition of Catholics in China by reaching agreement with the Chinese regime on the appointment of bishops, the traditional stewards of the faith in local communities.

Two years on, it’s clear that the Sino-Vatican agreement has not shielded Catholics from the Party’s depredations, to say nothing of the Party’s horrific treatment of Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong devotees, and other religious believers. The State Department’s 2019 annual report on religious freedom provides an illustrative example in the story of Father Paul Zhang Guangjun, who was beaten and “disappeared” for refusing to join the CCP-run Patriotic Catholic Association. Sadly, his experience is not unique. Communist authorities continue to shutter churches, spy on and harass the faithful, and insist that the Party is the ultimate authority in religious affairs.

As part of the 2018 agreement, the Vatican legitimized Chinese priests and bishops whose loyalties remain unclear, confusing Chinese Catholics who had always trusted the Church. Many refuse to worship in state-sanctioned places of worship, for fear that by revealing themselves as faithful Catholics they will suffer the same abuses that they witness other believers suffer at the hands of the Chinese authorities’ increasingly aggressive atheism.

In Hong Kong, the local government’s recent imposition of a Beijing-mandated National Security Law raises the specter that the Party will use the same tactics of intimidation and the full apparatus of state repression against religious believers. Hong Kong’s most prominent voices for human dignity and human rights have often been Catholics, so it is no surprise that prominent Catholics like Martin Lee, the “father of democracy” in Hong Kong, and Jimmy Lai, an outspoken media baron and promoter of democracy, have been arrested, spied on, and harassed for the simple “crime” of advocating the basic freedoms Beijing promised to protect in exchange for regaining sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997. I know both men and can attest to their goodness and sincerity of heart. Their devotion to God, to all God’s children, and to a peaceful, free, and prosperous China is undeniable.

Many nations have joined the United States in expressing revulsion at the Chinese regime’s accelerating violations of human rights, including religious freedom. Last year, 22 nations sent a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council to denounce the CCP’s detention of more than a million Uyghur Muslims, ethnic Kazakhs, and other minorities in so-called “re-education” camps in Xinjiang. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which includes legislators from democracies around the world, has deplored the Party’s “unfolding atrocities.” The State Department has been a strong voice for religious freedom in China and around the world and has taken steps to hold those who abuse the faithful responsible for their actions. We will continue to do so.

First Things

*Note from Bob Fu: After reading this Op-Ed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, please use your influence to encourage the Vatican to change its current, corroborative course appeasing the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal rule. The Vatican’s strong, stance supporting religious freedom and human rights in China will work to counter history repeating what happened during Hitler’s regime in the 1930s.


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