Some of the penalized Chinese clergy – like other Catholics who believe that the Church may eventually reverse its position on fundamental moral issues – may be “hoping is that in the future the Church is going to change in their direction, and they're going to be able to outlast the current situation” in which they face excommunication for their actions.
They may also be looking back to the large number of state-recognized bishops who were accepted into communion with the Holy See during the 1970s and 80s – and assuming that a penalty of excommunication in 2011 might be similarly resolved in the future.
“If the Vatican sometimes does give those kind of mixed messages, that they'll bring these non-approved ordinations around into becoming approved, then that can give a message to the Chinese clergy that in the long run we're going to be approved, it's going to be okay, and this is what's best for the Church.”
“That seems to be the more complex situation that is going on, on the ground, that doesn't always come out in our Western consciousness.”
The situation also brings up some of the most acute tensions between faith and national identity, for individuals and the Chinese Church as a whole.
“Chinese nationalism is as strong as, or stronger than, our U.S. nationalism,” Faries observed. “That can be a danger for any Christian. They might feel that they can be safely independent in some ways, have independent opinions – and can, perhaps unintentionally and temporarily, buck the Vatican, and have confidence that it's going to be okay.”
Some of that confidence might come from recalling that “it's been okay in the past” to be illicitly ordained, and later regularized in accordance with Rome's more merciful previous approach.
Other may be similarly confident simply because they believe “China's 'just too important,' and supposedly the Vatican eventually will come around to helping their Church in the way they think it should.” It's a kind of independence Faries says “can be destructive or dangerous to Catholicism.”
Still, he remains hopeful that Chinese Catholics' strong sense of cultural and national identity can benefit the universal Church in the long run.
“Once it's blended back in with some sort of relationship with the Vatican, as in the late 70s and 80s,” he said, “you perhaps have a healthy mix of national, Catholic and Christian identity, that can do interesting and important things theologically and for the nation.”
“When the Holy Father speaks to China,” he pointed out, “he seems so excited about what that group of group of people can bring to the faith.”
(Story continues below)
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Faries notes that many people are coming to faith quite sincerely in the official churches, while the communist government has shifted away from the Marxist notion that religion will someday die out. But he sees little indication of any drastic change, even if Beijing and the Vatican resolve their current problems.
“There's a lot of hope, for some people – for the Catholics, that they might get their 'Emperor Constantine' there in China, that would change things around,” he recalled.
“I really feel like it's a slower thing than that.”