Tag Archives: Cardinal Zen

It’s Zen-Again !

18 Sunday Feb 2018

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Four days ago, Pope Francis issued a Motu Proprio suggesting that his bishops once retired ‘live austerely and shun power’. The document is apparently aimed at those elderly clerics whose lifestyle after retirement has caused considerable comment.
We must also hope that Cardinal Zen, well known to us all on this blog, takes a hint. With all due respect t to his eminence, it is undoubtedly time that he learned to keep his mouth shut. Only a week or two ago, his contribution to the delicate ongoing process of discussions with the Chinese Government and the Vatican was: ‘Either you surrender or you accept persecution’.
The first thing that springs to our minds- and I remind you that the youngest member of ‘To Feed The Flock’ is in his late seventies –is what the hell has this to do with him? Obviously we can have only the vaguest idea of what it is to live under a totalitarian regime, and the underground Catholics who have kept the Faith deserve far more than the congratulations than they can ever get in this world. But the 86 year old cardinal feels they are being let down by the Vatican. What he means is that they are not adhering strictly to Canon Law.
Yes, Canon Law. We may have already mentioned the old academic joke in a book review, about a writer using statistics for support rather than illumination , but the principle certainly applies to some of the edicts of Canon Law, which must be one of the most paranoiac documents ever written , and is permanently embedded in a psychic Rome in 1917, and the fears of a new Garibaldi.
All one can say – or all we can say- about the history of China is that if ever a race was messed about it has been the Chinese. Now that it is a modern state, and let’s accept it, the world’s most successful one at the moment , it must be given its place.
Most important of all, why do we only hear about reactions to the ongoing negotiations, which are in any case too delicate to be subjected to the opinions of cantankerous old men, from the same old men? Could it be that the persecuted minority became persecuted so that China could be brought into the Church?
Have they ever been asked? Do they really care about what Cardinal Zen and his like think? Or unlike Cardinal Zen and his like, can they visualise their own country and their own young people moving into a life in this chaotic and dynamic and unpredictable century with the support of the Eucharist ?
The rest of us should . It will affect us, our children, and grandchildren.

Another Cardinal Offence

29 Monday May 2017

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What is it with these old churchmen?
‘It seems the Vatican- China deal is not proceeding . That’s good !’ This is not a statement from some battle-scarred old Stalinist commissar, veteran of the Long March you will be interested to know , but from Cardinal Zen. This belligerent 85 year old has intervened, and not for the first time, into the infinitely delicate and complex negotiations which may yet help to bring the Eucharist to the millions in China seeking spiritual sustenance. That is his contribution. It is difficult to follow exactly what his problem is , a constant difficulty with the older person .
Sometimes, if we understand him correctly, he seems to be against any kind of agreement with the Chinese Government seeing this as a betrayal in some way of those who were and still are being persecuted ,.The fact that they put themselves in this situation in the hope of ultimately bringing about the kind of agreement , and China back into the Church, he is moaning about seems to be too difficult for him to grasp. The ‘Catholic Herald’ however suggests another solution, and we quote: ‘What seems to rile the Cardinal most about the proposed deal is that he and other bishops from China have been left out of the discussion. ‘ We haven’t space , but a look in his Wikipedia might be instructive.
Interestingly, he was made a Cardinal by who else-no not him- but Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. And he has emerged once more from retirement, like the celebrated cuckoo from the clocks in his native Black Forest, to suggest with as much sense as the cuckoo , that we all stand by Cardinal Sarah, he who is so keen about which direction one looks when saying Mass. Our Latin is rusty, but it would have been nice to tell him that if the heat was so bad, why does he not stay permanently out of the kitchen. He would have understood the Latin , naturally. But why can’t he understand that he could simply be confusing people, and that nobody in 2017 really cares what he thinks ?
What happened to all the finger-wagging about humility, and accepting God’s will to which we have often been subjected so unnecessarily ? Do these not apply to these bothersome and infinitely tedious old men ? Retire them? Can we not sack them?

cardinal offence

26 Sunday Feb 2017

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We have survived an ingenious attempt to murder us by an induced spike of very high blood pressure. Or, of course, it might just have been produced buy stupidity. Or the inability to read.
Anyway, it was said of us ‘Are they still trying to get married priests ?’ Yes, us.
As our readers know, we’d sooner found the Square Wheel Society of Great Britain, or the Chocolate Teapot Association.
We are for two things: the first is the extension of ordination beyond the present limits of celibacy, six years of theology and parish support, so that the Eucharist can be provided for the Flock.
The second is for China to become part of the Church, with the same result.
This leads us to Cardinal Zen, former archbishop of Hong Kong,. Now 85, he had to run for his life during the Mao era in China. He certainly knows what he is talking about when it comes to Communist persecution, and has been a fearless and outspoken critic of the regime throughout his life.
He now, unfortunately, reminds us of the old general in the film of ‘The Four Feathers’ for whom every meal was an opportunity to fight the battle of Balaclava yet again , thirty years later, with knives, spoons and the sugar bowl.
As ever, we have someone else who does not realise that this is 2017, and once again the Code of Canon Law of 1917 appears. In China, there is the underground church and the state controlled church. Both have validly ordained bishops. But Cardinal Zen believes that any attempt to allow the state controlled church to nominate bishops is for some reason a betrayal of the underground church , although such nomination was common practice in Europe for hundreds of years.
Against a background of the most delicate and Byzantinely complex nature of the negotiations going on at present with the Chinese government, his language is negative and essentially adversarial- ‘betrayal’; selling’,’capitulation’. It is interesting that we have not heard much from the underground church on how it feels about the rest of China being able to join the Church; they might not see it as a selling out but as a glorious passing on of belief , as the early Christians must have felt when they were allowed to leave the catacombs.
The Cardinal is on record , in November 2016, as saying he would rather have no bishops than fake bishops., Even Code of Canon Law (1917) fans must feel that we are now wildly over the top. Since the bishops of the state controlled church are validly ordained, if ‘illicitly’, i.e. without the permission of the Curia ,this is really not just an actual challenge Canon Law but denies the Apostolic Succession.
All we can do is remember him in our prayers, and hope that there are not too many like him in the Chinese Government.
The Church exists to provide the Eucharist for the Flock. Anything, positively or negatively which prevents it from doing so is denying Christ’s imperative at the Last Supper.