Battle of the Bishops

By Simon Elegant/Beijing

It's not surprising, given their common penchant for intrigue and suspicion, that the rulers of China and the Roman Catholic Church have had a hard time getting along. Beginning five centuries ago, emissaries from the Vatican visited Beijing to seek permission to conduct missionary work in China. During the Qing dynasty they built iron globes and trellises for the Emperor--astronomical instruments that at the time were considered cutting-edge technology. That approach didn't work: a later Emperor banned all Christian missionary activity, sending the clerics packing. He kept the Vatican's gifts, however, on a tower overlooking the thick stone walls that once protected the city from unwelcome outsiders.

China has opened itself up to the world since then, but wariness about the Vatican persists. The latest episode in the stormy relationship unfolded last week, when the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), the state-controlled church to which 4 million Chinese Catholics belong, ordained two new bishops without the Vatican's permission. Considering that Rome has claimed absolute authority over clerical appointments for almost two millenniums, its reaction to the news was predictably swift. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said that Pope Benedict XVI learned of the appointments with "great sadness." That may have been the understatement of the year, as Navarro-Valls also said church law calls for the automatic excommunication of the two new bishops and those who installed them. Hong Kong's Bishop Joseph Zen, who was recently promoted to Cardinal and has mediated between Beijing and Rome, called China's moves "very damaging to the relationship. It can't be worse than this."

It certainly couldn't have come at a worse time for China's Catholics. Since the Communist takeover in 1949, all Catholics have had to join the state-sanctioned CPCA or face persecution. Out of the estimated 12 million Catholics in the country, a majority are thought to worship at secret underground churches that are loyal to the Vatican. Since his elevation to the papacy, Benedict has sought to repair ties so that those faithful can practice in the open. The goal was full diplomatic relations and possibly even a papal visit to China by 2008, when Beijing will be host of the Olympics. In recent years, says Father Bernardo Cervellera, director of the Rome-based Asia News Service, the Beijing church has quietly ceded to the Vatican's choices on bishops. Meanwhile, top church officials have floated the idea of breaking diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province.

For China's rulers, improving relations with the Vatican would seem to fit with their efforts to burnish the country's international prestige. But the government remains cautious about expanding religious freedoms, mindful, no doubt, of the role the Catholic Church played in the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. And despite the Vatican's charm offensive, Beijing has refused to negotiate the release of the scores of Catholics loyal to Rome who sit in Chinese prisons, according to Nicolas Becquelin, China researcher for the New York City-based Human Rights Watch. To some, China's decision to ordain the two bishops was a deliberate bid to reassert its authority over the country's Catholics. Becquelin believes that church officials may have overestimated China's flexibility. "There was never any intention by Beijing to change or loosen its grip on religion," he says. "Either they got an agreement on their terms, or they maintain the status quo under which they have pretty good control of the underground Catholic Church."

The question is whether Beijing's moves have wrecked the possibility of detente with Rome. Navarro-Valls said that the Pope was willing to continue discussions about normalizing relations so long as Beijing agreed to stop ordaining bishops on its own. But some Vatican officials say that Beijing may not find Benedict in such a generous mood in the future. Says a senior Vatican official: "It's a demonstration of bad faith on the part of the Chinese government ... [they] are used to playing these mind games, of using brinkmanship." Of course, that's a game the Vatican knows how to play as well.

With reporting by Jeff Israely/ Rome