Denver Catholic

22 MARCH 14-27, 2020 | DENVER CATHOLIC Perspectives Doubling down on a bad deal St. Joseph is the great exemplar of Lenten virtues P erseverance on a di± cult but noble path is a virtue. Stub- bornness when confronted by irrefutable evidence of a grave mis- take is a vice. The latter would seem an apt char- acterization of a letter sent on Ash Wednes- day to the entire Col- lege of Car- dinals by its new Dean, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. In that letter — his fi rst o± cial act as Dean — Car- dinal Re reprimands the redoubtable Cardinal Joseph Zen, SDB, emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, for his criti- cisms of the agreement the Vatican made with the People's Republic of China in 2018. The bloom is o‚ the Chinese rose just about everywhere in the world. So it is more than disturbing that the Holy See should be doubling down on what everyone (except those directly involved in cutting it) thinks is a very bad deal: bad, because it allows the Chinese Communist Party to nomi- nate candidates for bishop, which the Holy See can then approve or reject. Why is the bloom o‚ the Chinese rose? Why are China and its "model" no longer lauded in the global com- mentariat? The initial Chinese mis- handling (and worse) of COVID -19, the coronavirus, has had an impact. Before anyone had heard of COVID - 19, however, there was mounting concern about the intentions and brutality of the Chinese communist regime: about its herding Uighurs into concentration camps; about its assaults on religious communities, including the defacing and demolition of Catholic churches after the accord with the Holy See was signed; about its aggressive military moves in the South China Sea; about its creation of an Orwellian internal security apparatus through facial-recognition technol- ogy; about its ranking the Chinese cit- izenry according to their political reli- ability (meaning their acquiescence to what the Chinese Communist Party dictates); about its international espionage, often conducted behind the cover of putatively independent technology companies like Huawei; about its relentless digital attacks on Taiwan; and about the global Chinese "Belt-and-Road" initiative, which fi nancially shackles Third World countries to the Beijing regime. Yet nary a public word has been spoken by Vatican diplomacy about any of this. What is most disturbing about Cardinal Re's letter, however, is its claim that the 2018 Vatican-China agreement is in continuity with the d iplomacy of John Paul II and Bene- dict XVI. To my understanding, that is simply not right — or at best, it's a distortion of the historical record in service to defending what can't be defended on the merits. Yes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI sought ways to unite the Church in China. But neither was prepared to do so at the expense of the Church's right to order its internal life by Cath- olic criteria. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI could have had a deal in which the Chinese government would propose candidates for bishop, which the Vatican would then accept or veto. Both popes declined to accept any such arrangement, not only because it contradicted the teach- ing of Vatican II in its Decree on the Pastoral O± ce of the Bishops in the Church and Canon 377.5 of the Code of Canon Law, but because they knew that that concession would weaken the Church's evangelical mission in China. The deal Cardinal Re defends is not in a line of continuity with the policy of John Paul II and Benedict XVI: it is an even worse deal than the deal those popes would not make. For it concedes nominating power to the Chinese Community Party, which manages religious a‚ airs in China, not the Chinese government. And that is, in a word, intolerable. Cardinal Re's defense of the inde- fensible is a last gasp of the old Vat- ican Ostpolitik, the failed policy of making concessions to totalitarian regimes that did much damage to the Church in east central Europe during the 1970s. Italian Vatican diplomats still defend that policy, claiming absurdly that it set the table for the Revolution of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. But what did the Ostpoli- tik actually accomplish? It made the Hungarian hierarchy a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hungarian Com- munist Party, gutting the Church's evangelical credibility in the process. It demoralized Catholicism in what was then Czechoslovakia. It put unnecessary pressure on the Church in Poland. And it facilitated the deep penetration of the Vatican by commu- nist secret intelligence services. Cardinal Re's letter laments that the path forward for the Catholic Church in China is di± cult and com- plex. Who could doubt it? That path is not made easier, however, by making unbecoming concessions to thugs — or by calling out fellow-cardinals who challenge the 2018 Vatican-China deal because it does precisely that. L ike most Christians through- out the fi rst 1,400 years of the Church, many today can treat St. Joseph as an afterthought or some kind of ancient "player-to-be-named- later" in a package deal for the young virgin to whom he was espoused. His role as "foster father" of Jesus can often be regarded as an expendable accessory. As Matthew's and Luke's geneal- ogies show us, however, St. Joseph was the penultimate piece in a divine cascade stretching all the way back to King David, Abraham and even Adam, and it was through him that Jesus, under Jewish law and mentality, would be a descendent of David. If we were to ask Jesus and Mary, I'm convinced that they would want us to grow to love Joseph just as they did. We are celebrating the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pope Pius IX's naming St. Joseph as the patron of the universal Church. It's a special sesquicentennial that should infl u- ence everything the Church does this year, especially the way we prepare for and celebrate the Solemnity of St. Joseph on March 19. And insofar as March 19 always falls within the 40 days of Lent, it is important to learn how to grow in devotion to St. Joseph during the Lenten season. St. Joseph is a great exemplar for us of Lenten virtues that we do well to ponder and emulate. He fi rst teaches us about the silence needed in Lent. The state of the desert is meant to be one of exterior and interior silence, when we remove ourselves from the distractions that crowd our lives with so much noise that we can't hear God and so much clutter that we can't see him. St. Joseph is a man of silence, who didn't speak a word in sacred Scripture. Silence is a form of ascet- icism. It's not so much an emptying but an active listening to the God who in silence speaks. In 2005, Pope Ben- edict stated that in a world like ours, which does not foster quiet and rec- ollection, we all need to be "infected" with St. Joseph's silence so that we can hear God's voice. Second, St. Joseph teaches us about the obedience Lent cultivates. On Palm Sunday, St. Paul tells us, "Have the save mindset that is in Christ Jesus, who … humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, death on a Cross" (Philippians 2:5-8). Lent is about learning to obey as Christ obeyed. St. Joseph shows us the way. We see his prompt obe- dience in his response to God who spoke to him in dreams not to be afraid to receive Mary into his home, to arise and fl ee with Jesus and Mary to Egypt, and to return with them to Galilee. It would have been easy for Joseph, even in a pre-Freudian age, to deconstruct these dreams accord- ing to the standard of his conscious desires. Each dream was asking him The Catholic Di› erence George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. GEORGE WEIGEL Guest Column Father Roger J. Landry is the national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA and a priest of the Diocese of Fall River. FATHER ROGER J. LANDRY PHOTO BY PIXABAY

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