Catholic Bishops' Conference of Myanmar

Transcription

Welcome to Aid to the Church In Need’s Where God Weeps – a weekly program dedicated to the situation of the suffering Church around the world. China has an estimated twelve million Catholics. Four million in the Patriotic Church and roughly eight million underground. The government tried to separate the Chinese Church from Holy See. Then part of the Church said that’s not acceptable because we are one Church and so they abstain from collaborating and they were all sent to prison or labour camp. The other part believed that a compromise may be acceptable and so they stayed in the churches, they collaborated with the government, but then during the Cultural Revolution everybody was sent to prison and so the church disappeared completely. Churches were destroyed, seminaries closed and clergy killed or jailed. At the end of the Cultural Revolution all those people started coming out from the prison. The first group refused to collaborate with the government so they start to say mass in secret – they are called the underground. And the others are sent back to the Churches. So the government start reopening the Churches. Collaboration with the government has many advantages: restitution of property, permission and economic help to build new churches and the freedom to organize catechesis and bible study. But there is also a price to pay. The hands of the open Church are tied when Christian values clash with party directives such as the one-child policy, often enforced through abortions. Now the situation with the underground Church has not changed much. They are always under persecution. There are still many arrests. Some Bishops disappeared for several years. Religious literature published without authorization is regularly confiscated. The publishers are arrested and jailed. Chinese interested in Christianity have their first contact with the open churches. But not all of them stay in the open. Some of them go underground, attracted by the idea of uncompromising loyalty and heroism. I hope the rest of the world get to know better about the real situation of the Church in China and then help them with their prayers.