Describing religion in the People’s Republic of China is a bit like eating peanuts with chopsticks—it is a difficult process, even for the most adept. Talking about the Catholic communities is more complex still.
Confucius, in his Analects, valued above all else the right naming of things—the ‘rectification of names’. As such, it is important to dispatch some of the unhelpful terms that are often used to describe Catholicism in China. Throughout this article I refer to the ‘Catholic communities’ as a way of side-stepping the problematic dichotomies that have been applied to these faith communities—dichotomies like ‘patriotic’ and ‘suffering’, ‘loyal’ and ‘schismatic’. These words have been used since the 1950s, when the Chinese Communist Party sought to separate the Catholic communities from the universal church. This process of wedge politics, the application of ‘united front’ doctrine, was not without its successes and certainly not without its costs, at times terrible ones.
Simplistically, in the People’s Republic of China there are Catholics who belong to ‘official’ communities, ones which have been recognised by the government through a process of registration; there are members of ‘unofficial’ communities (the so-called underground), which refuse to register with the government; and there are yet more Catholics who live in an undefined area in between, participating in both types of communities.
Nevertheless, to continue to describe these official Catholic communities as schismatic, as does the United States-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, for instance, is both unhelpful and erroneous. Interestingly, for an organisation that prides itself on its devotion to the See of Peter, such descriptions also hinder the desire of the previous pope, John Paul II, for unity among the Chinese Catholic communities.
Throughout his papacy, John Paul II consistently recognised the difficulties faced by Catholics in China, praised their faithful witness and asked everyone in the church communities to work towards reconciliation.
At the World Youth Day in Manila in 1995 he addressed the following words to the church in China:
Your witness will be all the more eloquent if it is expressed in words and deeds of love. Jesus said so: ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (Jn 13:35). Love among yourselves, first of all, but love also for all your Chinese brothers and sisters: a love which consists of understanding, respect, forbearance, forgiveness and reconciliation within the Christian community, a love which involves