{"id":2157,"date":"2007-04-10T17:08:25","date_gmt":"2007-04-10T17:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/the-letter.html"},"modified":"2007-04-10T17:08:25","modified_gmt":"2007-04-10T17:08:25","slug":"the-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/the-letter.html","title":{"rendered":"The letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fr. Z reprints and comments on Cardinal Zen’s statement regarding the Pope’s forthcoming letter to Chinese Catholics<\/a> <\/p>\n

The statement references an letter, reprinted in the Chinese press, by an anonymous Chinese priest. Cardinal Zen’s conclusion:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

If readers, inside and outside China, accept the suggestions
\nof the article, they will expect the Holy Father to emphasise with
\nfriendship rather than truth and diplomatic relations rather than real
\nnormalisation and real religious freedom.<\/strong><\/p>\n

People with such expectations, I believe, will be disappointed when the letter does come out. <\/strong>They
\nmay even side with those who may eventually take an irrational,
\nretaliatory action. Then, the Catholic Church in China would be on the
\nroad of no return to becoming a national Church, independent from Rome.
\nThe best elements of the Church would, then, become frustrated and
\nvanish. Then, the normalisation of the life of faith would become a far
\naway dream.<\/p>\n

We must believe that the only purpose of the
\nHoly Father in writing such a letter is the real normalisation of the
\nreligious situation, so that the millions of Chinese Catholic faithful
\ncan live their lives of faith happily and bear abundant fruit. Let us
\nbe united in prayer and action behind this unique purpose for which we
\nmust stand up. Let us join the majority, or the almost totality of the
\nfaithful on mainland China, who are ready to accept, without
\nreservation, the directives contained in the Holy Father\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n

We beseech the leaders of our nation cease allowing an
\nenslaved Church to bring shame on our country, and to let a free and
\nrespected Church bring honour to our strong and respected country.
\nPlease, give these people, who are your citizens, the happiness of
\nfreedom to practice their faith. They will be willing to offer their
\nlives for the good of their country.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    
\n    
\n    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. Z reprints and comments on Cardinal Zen’s statement regarding the Pope’s forthcoming letter to Chinese Catholics The statement references an letter, reprinted in the Chinese press, by an anonymous Chinese priest. Cardinal Zen’s conclusion: If readers, inside and outside China, accept the suggestions of the article, they will expect the Holy Father to emphasise…<\/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-2157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe letter - 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\/04\/the-letter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The letter - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fr. Z reprints and comments on Cardinal Zen’s statement regarding the Pope’s forthcoming letter to Chinese Catholics The statement references an letter, reprinted in the Chinese press, by an anonymous Chinese priest. 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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\/2157","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=2157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}