I don’t know the stats of the RC Church in China…but I did not see any Chinese cardinals at the conclave. Are these guys allowed to travel out of China? The PROC government likes to control all religion-does it do so with the RCC?
The only cardinal of voting age from China is John Tong Hon, who is the bishop of Hong Kong. He’s taking part in the conclave.
In general, yes, the Chinese government does attempt to control and restrict the Catholic church in China, with fairly messy results. There’s a Patriotic Catholic Association which is effectively Chinese Catholics attempting to come to terms with, and/or co-operate with, the government, and it appoints bishops to Chinese dioceses, without (formal) approval from Rome. Sometimes Rome makes its own appointments; sometimes CPA appointments attempt to get “regularised” by Rome; sometimes there is a degree of quiet co-operation which is kept discreet because the government would not tolerate it if were public. The Patriotic Catholic Association is sometimes presented as though it were a schismatic rival church, but that’s probably an over-simplification.
What Chinese (as in the People’s Republic of China) Cardinals? I knew there was one who was appointed in secret–so secret he didn’t know about it for years–but he died in 2000. This list shows none from the PRC. There are two living Cardinals listed from Hong Kong; John Tong Hon, born in 1939; and Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, born in 1931.
AFAIK, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Associatioin doesn’t appoint Cardinals; they’re content (well, the government is content) with bishops.
Well, Hong Kong is of course a part of the PRC, albeit a “special autonomous region”, or whatever it’s called.
But, as far as the Catholic church is concerned, it’s always been a part of China. The diocese of Hong Kong is part of the ecclesiastical province of Canton, and a good part of the territory of the diocese is outside the colonial/SAR border, and in the PRC proper.
But, yes, the Bishop of Hong Kong enjoys much greater freedom than most other Chinese bishops.
Do any other countries claim the right to appoint, or at least veto bishops? I know historically this was a huge issue and source of conflict between the Popes and secular authorities, lasting for a millennium or more. Now-a-days, outside authoritarian countries like China, I can’t imagine any gov’ts care. But presumably in some places the rules were set back when people did care.
So does, for example, the King of Spain get any say, even symbolically on who the Spanish bishops are?
Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. The other SAR is the Special Administrative Region of Macao.
That’s not the vibe I’m getting from the diocese’s home page. It seems to me that they don’t consider the parishes in Guangdong itself to be part of the diocese. In other words, the diocese only covers the Hong Kong SAR. Now, I could be wrong, but that’s the way it looks to me.
The Bishop of Hong Kong, like everyone else in Hong Kong, is a beneficiary of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of religion in Chapter 3, Article 32:
Since the transfer of sovereignty to the PRC, the Basic Law has been followed.
Ecclesiastical organizations do not necessarily match political ones, nor should they. Andorra is part of the Diocese of Urgell and the Bishop happens to be one of the two Princes (the other one is the French President), yet I’m reasonably sure that Rome does not consider Andorra part of Spain.
Guangdong is a separate diocese. (Archdiocese, in fact.) And it’s the metropolitan diocese for (among others) Hong Kong. The archdiocese of Guangdong and the various dioceses of which it is the metropolitan together form the ecclesiastical province of Guangdong.
But, though it doesn’t include Guangdong, the diocese of Hong Kong includes a good deal of territory that is not in the colony/SAR of Hong Kong; the diocese is larger than the SAR. Having said that, from 1949 the diocese’s activities outside the colony/SAR have been pretty restricted and/or pretty low-key, and I’m not sure what current freedom of operation they have outside the SAR. But the canonical territory of the diocese has not been changed. As far as the Catholic church is concerned, the Bishop of Hong Kong is very much a Chinese bishop, and his canonical territory is in the People’s Republic of China, partly inside the Hong Kong SAR and partly outside it.
Well, in so far as the Catholic church takes any stance on this, they do treat Andorra as part of Spain.
The church isn’t hugely interested in national political divisions; it’s much more interested in nations as cultural and ethnic realities. A single national episcopal conference covers the whole of Ireland, for instance, including the whole of the Republic and part of the UK (specifically, Northern Ireland). There are two separate national conferences in Britain; one for Scotland and one for England and Wales. A single national episcopal conference covered both East and West Germany. Pyongyang (in North Korea) is a suffragan diocese of Seoul (in South Korea). And so forth.
As for Andorra, so far as the church takes any stance, it’s part of (ecclesiastical) Spain. The acts and decision of the Spanish episcopal conference apply there exactly as they apply in the rest of the diocese of Urgell, and in every other Spanish diocese. In the same way San Marino and the Vatican(!) are part of Italy for ecclesiastical purposes. And Hong Kong is part of China. In many ways, it’s one of the most important dioceses in China, which is why its bishop is the one to get the red hat.
Spanish monarchs used to have the right send the Pope a list of 3 candidates for vacant bishoprics, with the Pope making the final selection. Generalissimo Franco exercised the same right (among the many trapping of royalty he adopted) during is rule over Spain, but Juan Carlos renounced that right after becoming king. Presidents of Argentina had the same right (presumably a relic from the colonial era) up until 1966; though I think s/he can still veto papal appointments.