Lando, would you do the honors:
PopeWatch: China v. Vatican
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Bishop Lefebvre gets excommunicated by JP2 for consecrating bishops in an effort to preserve the ancient Mass. History looks ever more kindly on the Archbishop. In contrast, history will not be quite so kind to Pope Skandalon. Perhaps Dante’s masterpiece will have to be updated.
CCP breaks “agreement” with the Holy See.
“Unexpectedly!”
/sarcasm off
I’m betting Francis and his courtiers don’t really mind that much. Sure, they don’t like being publicly punked by the Chinese government, but it’s not as if the communists will be appointing bishops whose political and religious commitments are much different from what we have in Rome already. And the fate of the Chinese Pew Meat has obviously always been of zero importance to the crew running this pontificate; so aside from the bad optics, I don’t think our betters in Rome are actually unhappy.
I mean, it’s not as if Peking was installing traditionalist bishops who promoted the Latin Mass. That’s when we’d see Francis get furious.
“History looks ever more kindly on the Archbishop.”
Sadly, it does not. We’ve been arguing about Lefebvre’s motives for 35 years. Briefly stated though, a bishop, archbishop, seminary rector, or leader of a Society do not outrank a Pope. Lefebvre’s priests did not face threat of execution for failing to follow Swiss law. Nobody coerced Lefebvre. Francis and his Curia have acted foolishly toward China. They do have cause to be careful: .Chinese faithful DO face threat of execution if they seek to be openly Catholic.