The Vatican Surrenders to China

by Lawrence A. Franklin • January 20, 2019 at 5:00 am

The Vatican may learn the hard way that the Communist Chinese government does not honor its agreements. Beijing may attempt to extort even more concessions from the Vatican, just as the Chinese regime demands ever more surrender of sovereignty from western companies that do business in China.
It is also highly dubious that the Vatican will purchase peace by this pact: the regime will continue to persecute the Church. If the Communist regime is true to form, thousands more crosses will be taken down from Christian churches, especially in areas that have a high Christian population.
The courageous elders of Chinese Catholicism, who have endured decades of government persecution and regime efforts to divide the Church, may be seen by their flocks as having been bypassed by the Vatican. Many, if not most, Chinese Catholics are likely to view this agreement as a cynical political betrayal by the Vatican rather than a faith-based decision.
"In light of this dismal record, it seems that prudence and caution would seem to be the order of the day in Vatican negotiations with the totalitarians in charge in Beijing, at whose most recent Party Congress religion was once again declared the enemy of Communism." — George Weigel, Catholic author and political analyst.

With a recent agreement signed between the Vatican and China's regime, Pope Francis surrendered partial control of the Chinese Catholic Church to the Chinese Communist Party. Pictured: The Sacred Heart Cathedral in Guangzhou, China. (Image source: Zhangzhugang/Wikimedia Commons)

Pope Francis has surrendered partial control of the Chinese Catholic Church to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). His Holiness agreed to grant the Party considerable authority over personnel matters. After decades of refusing to give China the right to appoint Catholic bishops, as a condition for normalization of relations, the Vatican finally conceded to the regime's demand to allow the CCP a decisive role in the selection of bishops to head Catholic dioceses.

The Vatican's concession came despite the CCP's continued persecution of the unofficial, independent, underground Catholic Church in China. Yet the Vatican probably does not view this as a defeat but rather as a means to an end. The diplomatic hierarchy of the Catholic Church may be confident that the truth of its spiritual message will endure long after the CCP dissolves into the same historical trash bin as other totalitarian ideologies have done.

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France: I Am Angry, Therefore I Am

by Amir Taheri • January 20, 2019 at 4:00 am

The beauty of capitalism is in its ability to make money out of anything. On Saturday, as all cafés in the Champs-Élysées were shut for fear of attack by "Yellow Vests", mobile kiosks appeared selling espresso and croissants at double the price.
One of the few shops open away from the battlefield offered a designer version of the "Yellow Vest" at 125 euros apiece, compared of just 20 euros for the shabby original. So far, no "Yellow Vest" T-shirts, posters and mugs. But we expect some next Saturday.
We asked a lady at the next table what she would recommend from the day's menu and she suggested "Aligot sausage with mashed potatoes". We took her advice and were delighted by our meal. Which shows that "Yellow Vesters" might have good ideas when they know what they are talking about. Trouble is they often don't.

Even if the "Yellow Vests" form a political party in France, there is no guarantee that their cocktail of bourgeois boredom and anger would do better than Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and half a dozen similar outfits in other European democracies. Pictured: Yellow Vest protesters march in front of police on December 15, 2018 in Paris, France. (Photo by Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)

"We are angry!" This is the sentence that I have repeatedly heard from Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) demonstrators during the past three weeks while taking the political temperature in France. The assertion seems to refute my first diagnostic in a column last month that the movement reflected boredom rather than anger.

Having talked to dozens of rioters and observed some of their shenanigans including burning car tires, overturning parked cars and smashing shop-windows in posh streets, I am prepared to admit that both anger and boredom might be involved.

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