{"id":1476,"date":"2006-06-05T00:53:36","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T00:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/cardinal-thorn.html"},"modified":"2006-06-05T00:53:36","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T00:53:36","slug":"cardinal-thorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/cardinal-thorn.html","title":{"rendered":"Cardinal Thorn"},"content":{"rendered":"

As in "in the side" – Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong calls for a re-examination:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Wearing the red and white robes he was given after Pope Benedict XVI made him a cardinal in March, Cardinal Zen walked straight from celebrating Mass at the cathedral here to a prayer meeting on a cement-floored, indoor basketball court next door. He defended the students who died in and around Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, whom Beijing has labeled as counter-revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the state.<\/p>\n

"All they asked for was a clean government \u2013 is that a sin?" he said. "And what they wished for was a strong nation \u2013 is that a sin? All we’re doing is pursuing their aspirations."<\/p>\n

The Chinese Communist Party now bases its legitimacy to a considerable extent on the material prosperity it has brought to many of China’s 1.3 billion people. But Cardinal Zen questioned whether this was enough. He cited coal mine disasters and consumer safety scandals that have embarrassed Beijing repeatedly in recent years.<\/p>\n

"Yes, the economy has improved and some people have earned lots of money, but corruption abounds, the gap in wealth is huge, mines keep swallowing workers and fake milk powder and fake medicines are flooding the market \u2013 is this considered an improvement?" he asked. "If they had listened to the kind advice of the students and workers, would today’s country be a better country?"<\/p>\n

Liu Bainian, the secretary general of the government-approved Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in Beijing, voiced surprise that Cardinal Zen had spoken out on Tiananmen Square. "According to God’s holy teachings, what belongs to Caesar should be left with Caesar, and what belongs to God should be left with God," he said in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n

[snip]<\/em><\/p>\n

Mainland officials have occasionally suggested that Cardinal Zen makes intemperate remarks on the spur of the moment. But the cardinal read from a prepared text at the prayer meeting today, and his aides distributed copies of the text to prevent any confusion; Cardinal Zen later left the meeting without taking any questions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As in "in the side" – Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong calls for a re-examination: Wearing the red and white robes he was given after Pope Benedict XVI made him a cardinal in March, Cardinal Zen walked straight from celebrating Mass at the cathedral here to a prayer meeting on a cement-floored, indoor basketball court…<\/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-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCardinal Thorn - 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\/2006\/06\/cardinal-thorn.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cardinal Thorn - 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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. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}