De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Pope Francis is just back from a most extraordinary visit to Mongolia a country with just 1,450 Catholics and where the Catholic Church has only had a sanctioned presence since 1992, after Mongolia shrugged off its Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution. I scratched my head. Was this some extravagant embodiment of Bergoglio's "going out to the peripheries" rhetoric or some geopolitical wrangling, given the proximity of both China and Russia to Mongolia? But things were about to get crazier - much, much crazier, as Robert Royal summed up in his recent article in The Catholic Thing : "In the past week or so, the pope has: praised “that great imperial Russia” for its noble culture and humanity (a remark later admitted to be “badly phrased”); lauded Genghis Khan’s blood-soaked empire for its religious tolerance and “ pax mongolica ” (40 million killed, give or take); encouraged Chinese Christians to be good citizens of a na...

  Damian Thompson is in Rome and has secured an interview with Cardinal Pell. It is well worth a listen: As always, the Cardinal does a great job of clearly giving his opinion while being loyal and faithful to the Pope. On the Vatican/ China deal, Pell, the former Vatican Prefect for the Economy, states: 'I know high-up people in the Vatican are very dissatisfied with the way things are going,' The Cardinal uses this example to show how there is a lack of transparency in the Bergoglian Vatican: 'The agreement is there to try to get a bit of space for the Catholics. Obviously that's praiseworthy. [But] I don't think we've gained anything. The persecutions seem to be continuing. In some places they've got worse.' Nobody 'outside a small circle' knows the details of the agreement, 'which seems to me to be quite irregular.' Speaking on the weirdness of the synod, Pell remarks that there is a strange disconnect between Pope Francis' ow...

Matt Hadro of CNA spoke to Cardinal Joseph Zen, the bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, on the 11th February. Zen said that the situation of the Church in China is dire. The cardinal also predicted the end of the underground Church. Zen explained : “I’m fighting Parolin. Because the bad things come from him, he is so optimistic about the so-called ‘Ostpolitik’, the compromise. But you cannot compromise with the Chinese Communist Party, who are persecutors of the faith. They want complete surrender. That’s communism.” Zen was speaking at the offices of U.S. Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.). After the meeting, Smith told CNA that Cardinal Zen “is a Saint Paul of our time, who is not only a holy and an effective witness for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he is also a man of great truth about what is really happening in China.” I think it's criminal that Zen has to spend this time fighting the Vatican instead of being "an effective witness for the Gospel of Jesus Christ".

China - Hebei:  Asia News reports that four underground priests have disappeared in police custody. Two of the priests belong to the ancient Diocese of Xiwanzi; the other two to that of Xuanhua. All four priests were taken from their churches to a nearby hotel to be indoctrinated in the religious policy of the Chinese government because they refused to enrol in the Patriotic Association , which aims to create a Church independent of the Holy See. Meanwhile, in Shangcai (Henan), the cross of the bell tower of the church and some of the building's spires have been destroyed. Since China and the Vatican signed an agreement on the appointment of bishops, with which - at least in theory - the Pope is recognized as head of the Catholic Church - the Patriotic Association and the United Front have been waging a campaign to remind all priests that the Church in China "despite the agreement", is "independent" and as a requirement of their commitment to thi...

Recently back from his very first trip to China, Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo (chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences) is full of excited praise for the world's most populous country . “Those who best realize the social doctrine of the Church at this time are the Chinese.” So Sorondo gushed to the Italian newspaper, La Stampa , on Friday. “They seek the common good, subordinating all things to the general good.” One has to wonder just what planet Archbishop Sanchez is on! Has he heard of prison, persecution, negative participation in national life, one child policy and its enforcement, Tibet, the underground church, falang dang (?), and a host of other aspects of China's polity at variance with basic humanity, let alone anything near to what the Church teaches. Under the Vatican's new Sinopolitik perhaps he should be sent there as Nuncio? In any case what is completely clear is that this sort of political/economic analysis is an embarrassmen...

In the latest Spectator Podcast, Dr. Ed Condon and Dr. Damian Thompson discuss recent calamitous developments in the Pontificate of Pope Francis: Chile and China . I am especially glad they talk about Cardinal Danneels inclusion in the synod on the family as Pope Francis' special guest, despite serious questions about his cardinalate, see here and here  as I can't believe more questions haven't been asked about this, especially given his claims about Pope Francis' election in his autobiography ( see here for the details ). There's also analysis of the Chinese betrayal: Thompson concludes "the bad guys have won", Condon says there are faithful priests and bishops within the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, however he points out that many are opposed to any deal and the CPCA bishops incur automatic excommunication under canon 1382 . Huang was also publicly excommunicated by Benedict XVI in 2011. Another example of Pope Francis' flagrant d...