.- Following
yesterday’s announcement of a second ordination--in the same week--of a
Catholic bishop in China without consent from the Vatican, the Holy See
has announced its profound condemnation and said that excommunication
is now likely for the two illicit bishops as well as their consecrators.
Farther Joseph
Ma Yinglin was consecrated bishop last Sunday in the province of
Yunnan, while Fr. Joseph Liu Xinhong, was ordained to the province of
Anhui on Wednesday.
In a statement,
Holy See Press Office director Joaquin Navarro-Valls said that “the
Holy Father has learned of the news with profound displeasure, since an
act so relevant for the life of the Church, such as an episcopal
ordination, has been carried out in both cases without respecting the
requirements of communion with the Pope.”
He called the
act “a grave wound to the unity of the Church, for which severe
canonical sanctions, as it is known, are foreseen (cfr. canon 1382 from
the Code of Canon Law).”
According to the
current information received by the Vatican, “bishops and priests have
been subjected to - on the part of external entities to the Church -
strong pressures and to threats, so that they would take part in the
episcopal ordinations which, being without pontifical mandate, are
illegitimate and, besides, contrary to their conscience.”
“Various
prelates”, Navarro-Valls pointed out, “have given a refusal to similar
pressures, while others were not able to do anything but submit with
great interior suffering. Episodes of this kind produce lacerations not
only in the Catholic community but also in the internal conscience
itself.”
He said that the
Church now faces “a grave violation of religious liberty,
notwithstanding that it is sought to present the two episcopal
ordinations as a proper act to provide the pastors for vacant dioceses.”
The press
director explained that for some time the Holy See has followed “with
attention the troubled path of the Catholic Church in China and even
aware of some particularities of such a path, believed and hoped that
similar, deplorable episodes by now would belong to the past.”
“She considers
that now it is her precise duty”, he continued, “to give voice to the
suffering of the entire Catholic Church, in particular to that of the
Catholic community in China and especially to that of those bishops and
priests who were seen obligated, against conscience, to take part or to
participate in the episcopal ordination, of which, neither the
candidates or the consecrating bishops want to carry out without having
received the pontifical mandate.”
Citing rumors of
further episcopal ordinations, the Holy See asked for autonomy for the
Chinese Chirch and expressed its wishes that “such unacceptable acts of
violence and inadmissible constrictions are not repeated.”
Navarro-Valls
pointed to the Church’s long-standing desire “for honest and
constructive dialogue with the competent Chinese authorities for the
purpose of finding a solution that would satisfy the needs of both
parties,” but said that “initiatives such as the above mentioned do not
favor such dialogue but instead create new obstacles against it."
