{"id":4411,"date":"2005-08-05T07:40:25","date_gmt":"2005-08-05T07:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/beware-of-communists-bearing-gifts.html"},"modified":"2005-08-05T07:40:25","modified_gmt":"2005-08-05T07:40:25","slug":"beware-of-communists-bearing-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/beware-of-communists-bearing-gifts.html","title":{"rendered":"Beware of Communists Bearing Gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Also from the Tablet – a caution:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Like the secular martyrs of Tiananmen Square, and like the thousands of bishops, priests and faithful Catholics thrown into labour camps or killed since 1949, Cardinal Kung is still regarded as a criminal in China. His offence was to keep alive an underground Church that may have as many as 12 million adherents, compared with the four million known to worship in officially sanctioned Catholic churches. <\/p>\n

Indeed it was none other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who congratulated Cardinal Kung in 1999 on the seventieth anniversary of his priesthood with these words: \u201cYou have followed the example of Christ the Good Shepherd and even in the face of great suffering have not ceased to proclaim the truth of the Gospel by your words and example.\u201d <\/p>\n

I do hope that, from their undoubted places in heaven, Cardinal Kung and Father Kavanagh will inspire the Pope and his diplomats to realise that the Vatican can afford to wait. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Also from the Tablet – a caution: Like the secular martyrs of Tiananmen Square, and like the thousands of bishops, priests and faithful Catholics thrown into labour camps or killed since 1949, Cardinal Kung is still regarded as a criminal in China. His offence was to keep alive an underground Church that may have as…<\/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-4411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBeware of Communists Bearing Gifts - 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\/2005\/08\/beware-of-communists-bearing-gifts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beware of Communists Bearing Gifts - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Also from the Tablet – a caution: Like the secular martyrs of Tiananmen Square, and like the thousands of bishops, priests and faithful Catholics thrown into labour camps or killed since 1949, Cardinal Kung is still regarded as a criminal in China. His offence was to keep alive an underground Church that may have as…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/beware-of-communists-bearing-gifts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-08-05T07:40:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Beware of Communists Bearing Gifts - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/beware-of-communists-bearing-gifts.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Beware of Communists Bearing Gifts - Via Media","og_description":"Also from the Tablet – a caution: Like the secular martyrs of Tiananmen Square, and like the thousands of bishops, priests and faithful Catholics thrown into labour camps or killed since 1949, Cardinal Kung is still regarded as a criminal in China. 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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\/4411","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=4411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}