{"id":1401,"date":"2007-06-19T10:27:50","date_gmt":"2007-06-19T10:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/letter-to-china-1.html"},"modified":"2007-06-19T10:27:50","modified_gmt":"2007-06-19T10:27:50","slug":"letter-to-china-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/letter-to-china-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Letter to China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Minter, author of this month’s Atlantic article on the Church in China (which I’ve not read yet) has a blog post on the forthcoming letter from the Pope to Chinese Catholics.<\/a><\/p>\n

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In terms of the content, APcom\u2019s source indicates that the text includes an overview of Vatican-China relations over the last fifty years, and some consideration of Cardinal Tomko\u2019s infamous \u201cEight Points<\/span><\/a>.\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201copen\u201d) Catholic Church in China. The most infamous proscription, point 5, reads:<\/p>\n

Another rather delicate point is the question of the liturgical celebrations. In fact all \u2018communicatio in sacris\u2019 is to be avoided. The \u2018patriotic\u2019 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In matter of fact and practice, that point has been seriously \u201cviolated\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

In my recently published profile of Shanghai\u2019s Bishop Jin Luxian in the Atlantic<\/span><\/a> (subscriber only), I allude to the fact that the Underground Church\u2019s anti-communist supporters in the Vatican often worked at complete tangents with what Pope John Paul II wanted in connection with China\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Of the those Vatican officials who were working for the Pope\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

MORE<\/a><\/p>\n

VIa Jen Ambrose<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Minter, author of this month’s Atlantic article on the Church in China (which I’ve not read yet) has a blog post on the forthcoming letter from the Pope to Chinese Catholics. In terms of the content, APcom\u2019s source indicates that the text includes an overview of Vatican-China relations over the last fifty years, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLetter to China - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/letter-to-china-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Letter to China - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Adam Minter, author of this month’s Atlantic article on the Church in China (which I’ve not read yet) has a blog post on the forthcoming letter from the Pope to Chinese Catholics. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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