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"Vatican To Allow Beijing To Name Bishops"
onepeterfive.com
"The Vatican is set to sign an agreement with China by the end of the month, one that cedes control over the appointment of bishops to Beijing. In return, we are told, Beijing has agreed to recognize the pope as the head of China’s Catholics.
From my position as a longtime observer of the machinations of the Chinese Party-State, this seems like a bad deal. The pope is ceding his very real authority to name bishops to China’s communist authorities in return for the promise of symbolic recognition as the titular head of all Catholics in China...
Beijing went on to insist upon a 'Chinese model,' under the terms of which the communist authorities alone will nominate a potential candidate for bishop. The pope must then approve or reject that candidate. If he vetoes the first candidate, Beijing will nominate another.
The pope’s 'veto power,' however, is not unlimited.
As a Chinese official familiar with the negotiations was quoted as saying, '[w]e cannot submit endless candidate lists to the Vatican if the pontiff keeps saying no. We may have to appoint bishops unapproved by the pontiff after a set number of rounds of negotiations. Such bishops may not be legitimate under the Church doctrine, but they can still give Church services to Chinese Catholics.'
In other words, the pope may veto an obviously unsuitable candidate or two, but Beijing has made it clear that there is a limit to the number of times a papal veto can be used. It has also limited the amount of time that the Vatican has to respond once a candidate’s name is submitted.
This means that at the end of the day, it is the communist authorities, and not Pope Francis, who will have the final say over who becomes a bishop in the Chinese Catholic Church.
The Vatican is reportedly prepared to make other concessions as well.
Perhaps the most important is that Pope Francis will formally consecrate as bishops seven men who were made 'bishops' by the communist authorities over the past decade. All of these men have been previously rejected by the Vatican as bishop candidates for various reasons having to do with personal morality, public actions, or both.
In a further concession, the Vatican has promised that the pope will lift the excommunication of the seven illicit 'bishops' of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association even before the new agreement is signed.
Second, the pope will order two bishops of the underground Church, who have faithfully served for decades under intense persecution, to hand over their dioceses to bishops appointed by the communist authorities."
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