‘This day’

“Do you know what day this is?” asked the frail, seamy-faced Trappist monk. “Don’t bother me old man,” snapped his fellow prisoner, Jean Pasqualini. Both were trudging toward work fields in 1961 from their prison camp south of Beijing.

It was Christmas, Pasqualini suddenly remembered. He sensed the monk  wanted to pray. “You’re mad,” he erupted.

“But I must,” was the reply. “We’re the only two here to whom this day means something.”

“Fifteen minutes, old man. No more. Understand?” Pasqualini hissed as the monk limped down from the ridge. Any minute a guard’s whistle could blow. Pasqualini squirmed. But only the winter wind ruffled poplars. He peered into the valley.

The monk used a rock for an altar. A mug served as a chalice and a flattened tin can a paten. He had fermented wine from saved summer grapes. An unleavened loaf came from scrap grain. Tattered prison garb were Mass vestments.

“He knew he could be shot,” Pasqualini recalled for Reader’s Digest years later. “Whenever it is Christmas, once again I see him standing serenely in that  freezing wind, holding wafer and wine, declaring his oneness with God.”

In Christmas 2011, more people in China will “go to church than in the whole of Europe” where church attendance continues to dip, notes the British Broadcasting Corp.

How many Chinese Christians are there? asked Tim Gardam in a BBC Radio 4 program. Beijing claims 25 million. Roughly, 18 million are Protestants and six million Catholics.

“This is a vast underestimate,” the BBC said. A conservative figure is 60 million. Converts range from peasants in remote villages to sophisticated middle class youngsters in booming cities.

Mao Zedong described religion as “poison.”  The Cultural Revolution attempted to eradicate it—and failed. Driven underground, Christianity survived. With its own martyrs, it spread.

In the 1980s, religious  belief was again permitted, albeit with shackles. The State Administration for Religious Affairs oversees “official churches.” Christians are corralled into designated places of worship. “Love the country—love your religion” is the slogan.

The Communist Party promotes atheism in schools. It undertakes “to protect and respect religion, until such time as religion itself will disappear.” This post-Mao rewrite renders unto Caesar what belongs to God.

The official Church has carved elbow room. But numbers attending official churches are dwarfed by “house churches.” These sprouted like mustard seed. “They unnerve the official  Church which fears their fervor may provoke a backlash.”

There is a large Catholic underground Church. The officially sanctioned Chinese  Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) appoints its own bishops with agreement by the Vatican. Inch by inch, Rome and Beijing strived to come to an accommodation where no one yielded what it deemed essential.

That effort collapsed when priests who belonged to the state-sanctioned CCPA were consecrated bishops without the agreement of the Holy See. The Vatican excommunicated Fr. Paul Lei Shiyin who had been ordained as bishop.

Weeks later, the Holy See welcomed Peter Luo Xuegang as the new bishop of Yibin. But it flayed “participation of the illegitimate bishop (Paul Lei Shiyin), who has the canonical status of an excommunicated person.” This causes “disagreement and confusion among the faithful.”

No illegitimate bishop may participate in the ordination liturgy, in accordance with Catholic norms, the Vatican Press Office’s  Fr. Federico Lombardi stressed. Bishop Shiyin shrugged off the warning.

Pressures on Chinese priests vary with time and region. “In real life, the boundaries are permeable,” as the state tries to hold shepherds hostage to scatter their flocks, writes “Rocky” (the pen name of a Chinese seminarian).

Sanctions smash those who opt  for communion with the Chair of Peter. “They feel lonely and helpless.” Some are  frustrated by the Vatican’s policy of groping for a modus vivendi with the CCPA.

At the other end are those “nurtured by government … to control the life of a diocese. They are plied with privileges. Others are coerced and some blackmailed for misconduct. Clandestine party members were infiltrated since seminary formation.”

In between, some buckle when persecuted. Perhaps, pressured bishops should seek a dispensation from the Vatican rather than confuse their people. But fear of losing face—a typical Chinese personality trait—is a psychological hurdle.

Ties with the Pope are fine but not essential to the core of  faith, others reason. The Second Vatican Council’s drive to reform an overly centralized papacy becomes within a socialist China carte blanche to disobey. They point to 300-plus dissident Austrian priests who signed a “Pledge of Disobedience.”

Others split hairs. The Pope can be ignored, if one has “proportionate reasons.” Like what? Like opening a new clinic, building a larger convent, even a chance to proclaim the gospel.

“Speak human words to humans and ghostly words to ghosts” is a Chinese proverb. It morphs into an excuse that ends justify means.

“I think it is very natural that many other people will not be satisfied,” professor He Guanghu of Renmin University in Beijing told the BBC. “They seek some meaning for their lives. When Christianity falls into their lives, they will seize it very tightly.”

Pasqualini summed up He’s insight after the Trappist monk’s underground Mass. “Merry Christmas, Father Hsia,” he said. The monk smiled back: “Jean, Merry Christmas.”

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