In terms of the content, APcom’s source indicates that the text includes an overview of Vatican-China relations over the last fifty years, and some consideration of Cardinal Tomko’s infamous “Eight Points.” Both of these are quite necessary. In my experience, few inside or outside of China have a knowledge or understanding of the complicated set of historical and political circumstances that contributed to the current divisions in the Chinese Catholic Church. The latter issue – Tomko’s Eight Points – have been a touchy issue in and outside of China for many years. Issued in 1988, by the then Prefect of Propaganda Fide, Jozef Tomko, the Eight Points document strictly proscribed Catholic contact with members of the registered (or “open”) Catholic Church in China. The most infamous proscription, point 5, reads:
Another rather delicate point is the question of the liturgical celebrations. In fact all ‘communicatio in sacris’ is to be avoided. The ‘patriotic’ bishops and priests are not be invited or even allowed to celebrate religious functions in public, either in the church or in the oratories of the various religious instititutes.
In matter of fact and practice, that point has been seriously “violated” by countless laity, deacons, nuns, monks, priests, bishops, and cardinals in China, Hong Kong, North America, and Europe over the past two decades. Indeed, outside of the more hard-line anti-communist hierarchy (of which Tomko was the most notable member), it has never been taken seriously. And yet, at the same time, the Eight Points have served to confuse an already confusing situation and, in some cases, been used as a blunt propaganda tool against open church leaders.
In my recently published profile of Shanghai’s Bishop Jin Luxian in the Atlantic (subscriber only), I allude to the fact that the Underground Church’s anti-communist supporters in the Vatican often worked at complete tangents with what Pope John Paul II wanted in connection with China’s Church. Because of the sensitivity of the issue, I could not and cannot reveal the sources for that claim, but suffice it to say that the Eight Points would likely be a part of any discussion that explores that claim.
Of the those Vatican officials who were working for the Pope’s policies, none was – or continues to be – more important than a little known Archbishop by the name of Claudio Maria Celli. Rev. Larry Murphy, a past President of Seton Hall who played an important role as an intermediary between Rome and the Chinese Church during the 1980s and 1990s, described Celli to me in September 2006:
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