Can the Vatican-China deal move forward without looking back?

The Holy See hailed 'consensus' on the agreement's future, but is any agreement with Beijing on what's happened already?

The Holy See announced Tuesday that it has renewed for four years its “Provisional Agreement regarding the Appointment of Bishops” with the Chinese government — an increase from the prior two-year renewals signed after the deal was originally struck in 2018.

Alamy stock image.

The renewal of the agreement comes “in light of the consensus reached for an effective application” of the deal into the future, according to the Vatican’s press statement.

“The Vatican Party remains dedicated to furthering the respectful and constructive dialogue with the Chinese Party, in view of the further development of bilateral relations for the benefit of the Catholic Church in China and the Chinese people as a whole,” the statement said.

The renewal of the agreement was widely anticipated, and had been acknowledged by both sides as near-inevitable for months prior to the formal announcement.

And while the Holy See’s formal recognition of a role for the Chinese Communist Party in the appointment of bishops has attracted considerable criticism over the last six years, both sides can reasonably point to some moments of seemingly genuine cooperation, including some recent episcopal appointments and the attendance of two mainland bishops at the current session of the synod on synodality.

But while the Holy See’s brief statement praised the “consensus” reached on the deal’s future implementation, it is unclear if there has been any resolution of the various problems created by the deal’s implementation thus far.

Those problems, while unacknowledged by the public statements heralding the deal’s renewal, present an ongoing obstacle to any real normalization of the Church in China — supposedly the stated aim of both sides.

While recent events suggest a perhaps genuine, if likely limited, willingness to cooperate by Beijing, both sides can only politely ignore the growing number of ecclesiastical and ecclesiological elephants in the room with negotiators.

How those issues are eventually resolved, and who is required to sacrifice the most “face” in the process, could signal the true balance of the “consensus” touted by the Vatican on Tuesday.

—

The new, double-term renewal of the Vatican-China deal notwithstanding, the most pressing concerns for the Vatican is, or ought to be, the fate of the various clergy, including some bishops, arrested or “disappeared” by the mainland government since the Vatican-China deal first came online in 2018, including those who have refused to sign up to the state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and been detained this year.

While securing the release of detained bishops and protecting the freedom of Chinese priests to dissent from the CPCA has for years appeared to be a losing if not wholly lost battle for the Vatican, some recent developments may offer scope for some qualified optimism.

Earlier this year, Beijing took the unprecedented step of recognizing an underground mainland bishop as the legitimate leader of his diocese.

Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen, 95, has led the Diocese of Tianjin since 1982 — first as coadjutor and then diocesan bishop from 2019 — and is the first Catholic bishop government authorities have recognized who has not formally joined the CPCA.

Some have expressed hope that his acceptance by the government could signal a new path for underground clergy to achieve state recognition without joining the CPCA, since doing so requires affirming a formula placing Communist Party teaching and authority over the Church’s own. 

While that is possible, though, it is worth pointing out that notice of Shi’s official government recognition ceremony — a purely civil affair at the bishop’s insistence — was not communicated to the Vatican until after the fact. And while the bishop is now recognized by all sides as leader of his diocese, he is 95 and no similar consensus has yet emerged on a suitable coadjutor to assist and eventually succeed him.

Indeed, while this year has seen a spate of cooperative episcopal nominations and announcements, there remains a years-long history of unilateral episcopal appointments by Beijing, with Rome left to accept the appointments after-the-fact, after first denying there was any problem before acknowledging China was, in fact, violating the agreement.

The extent to which the Chinese government continues to accept Roman involvement in appointing bishops — if possible before the appointments are announced — or lapses back into making its own decisions without reference to the pope will offer a reasonable indication of how much true “consensus” there now is, or how much of the recent progress has been staged in service of securing a longer term renewal for the Vatican-China deal.

While that remains to be seen, it is clear Beijing has been willing to make some surprising concessions in recent weeks — and not just regarding nonagenarian bishops. 

In the days prior to the deal’s renewal, the Chinese state announced the appointment of a new coadjutor bishop for the capital see of Beijing. Msgr. Matthew Zhen Xuebin is slated to be consecrated Friday, having been unveiled as the first bishop to be consecrated following the formal renewal announcement.

His appointment is notable for several reasons, not just his relative youth (54) and the youth of the man he will be assisting, Archbishop Li Shan (59).

Li is, in addition to Archbishop of Beijing, the president of the CPCA and de facto leader of the state-recognized Church on the mainland. Zhen, who is to be given primary responsibility for the pastoral care of the archdiocese on account of Li’s national duties, on the other hand, is foreign educated — one of the first batch of Chinese seminarians to train abroad in the 1990s. 

Senior clerics in China faithful to Rome describe him as “extraordinarily good” and have hailed his appointment to such a senior position as a complete shock. If more such appointments follow in the coming months, it will be taken by many — even some skeptical mainland Catholics — as a surprising new development.

But even if more cooperative appointments do follow, and even if previously detained clerics are quietly released, there remain real obstacles to any true normalization for the Church in China.

Most problematically for Rome, there is still the unresolved issue of the creation by the government of an entirely new diocese which the Vatican does not recognize as existing at all, and the suppression of another which Rome still considers to be existent. 

Beijing moving to create its own dioceses and extinguish others, often merging smaller, perennially vacant ones in the process, presents Rome with a particular problem which cannot be as easily agreed to after-the-fact as an episcopal appointment: Unlike the nomination of new bishops, there is no mechanism in the Vatican-China deal for the erection or suppression of dioceses, and no recognized role for the government in such a process.

The emergence of an increasingly distinct state church, independent of the Vatican not only in how it names bishops but even in the territories of the dioceses to which it names them, cannot be politely ignored forever by both sides forever — or even likely for the next four years.

If Rome does come around to accepting a redrawn diocesan map of the mainland, it would represent an extraordinary concession and an abdication of papal power to a secular — Communist even — state unprecedented in Church history.

Whether doing so is a price the Vatican decides is worth paying for a smoother and more amicable appointment process for bishops remains to be seen. But if it does, it could still backfire and serve to embolden Beijing to even greater unilateral ecclesiastical interference.