The People’s Daily in China has defended its government’s right to choose and appoint clerics, and that the Vatican must “recognize that China cannot be expected to adhere unquestioningly to culturally-alien rules that it never participated in creating”.

“China’s history has taken place outside the historical lands of Christianity and its experience is totally different. China can respect the decision of Europeans to allow the Vatican the kind of leeway it has in their countries, ” the paper states.

“It’s the West’s historical baggage and frankly its problem. But China is very much within its rights to question the power of the Vatican state to have sole authority in naming priests in faraway lands.

“The Pope, you see, is not just the Vicar of Rome, which is one of his titles. He is also a head of State, with soldiers who carry real guns, a diplomatic corps and a bank. Europeans may choose to see this as quaint, but China is questioning the principle of letting a foreign state dictate to another what happens on its own territory.

“The Church is an admirable institution which brings spiritual comfort to hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, but it is also a pragmatic one and has adapted and changed itself sometimes beyond recognition over the centuries.

“It must recognize that China cannot be expected to adhere unquestioningly to culturally alien rules that it never participated in creating, let alone ones which actually weaken the Church rather than strengthen it.

“Why can’t the Chinese pick their own bishops, ideally without the interference of any state, whether local or foreign? Excommunicating them was a medieval tool that has no place in 2011 in China or anywhere.

“The Vatican should adapt to take into account the potential of such a country as China and its cultural differences.

“Otherwise the Church risks being seen as caring more about its own temporal power than the spiritual needs of its Chinese flocks,” it adds.

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Catholicism should adapt to local conditions (People’s Daily)

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