FaithWorld

(Christmas Mass at a Catholic church in Beijing December 24, 2009/David Gray )

Bishops in China who are ordained without papal authorisation inflict a “grave wound” on the entire Catholic Church and should not let themselves be manipulated by the government, the Vatican has said. The Vatican issued the warning on Thursday after a meeting of a special commission that studies the situation of Catholics in China, who are not allowed to recognise the pope’s authority but forced to be members of a state-backed Church.

Last November, the Vatican condemned the ordination without papal permission of Reverend Joseph Guo Jincai, a member of the state-backed Church in Chengde. For a period before that, China and the Vatican had reached an agreement that the Vatican would give tacit but not explicit approval to some of the appointments of bishops by the government-backed Church after discreet consultations.

It said at the time various bishops loyal to the pope had come under pressure to attend Guo’s ordination ceremony.

Catholics in China are divided between one Church that recognises the pope and his authority to name bishops and a state-backed “patriotic association” which ordains its own. Priests anywhere in the world who allow themselves to be made bishops without papal approval are usually subjected to automatic excommunication, or a total cutoff from the Church.

But in its statement, the Vatican said “external pressures and constrictions” in China might exempt the new bishops from such drastic punishment.

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