Vatican to Sup with The Devil

It's not the Levantine Arabs this time. It's Beijing, as the Times of London and The Australian are reporting. This represents one of those particularly difficult moral condundra for the Holy See; what can be done to protect the rights of mainland Chinese Catholics, without:

• ignoring the rights of Taiwanese Catholics, or
• appearing to bless the Chinese Communist revolution (and let's face it, the Beijing government is almost as pro-Catholic / pro-religious freedom as the chaps in Saudi Arabia, and the Taipei government is arguably the legitimate goverment of China).

Glad I do not have to make the policy on that one.

On the "legitimate government" point, it is interesting to recall when various Latin American states were over-throwing their Spanish and Portuguese colonial administrators, the Church faced a similar dilemma. In those days, the Catholic Monarchies of Portugal and Spain appointed Catholic Bishops in their territories. The Church got around the problem by deciding that if the old regiemes of Spain and Portugal could re-establish authority on the ground within a reasonable time (in fact 15 years), then that was all well and good, and the old system of monarchial appointment could continue. Otherwise, the Vatican would take over the process and appoint its own Bishops.

Perhaps a sane way of bowing to the inevitable. Now that the Holy See appoints Bishops everywhere (I stand corrected if there is are one or two exceptions), is there really a problem with the Vatican appointing Taiwanese Bishops, even if they don't send a Nuncio to Taipei? That leaves the persecution of the Chinese Church as a major sticking block. Let's hope that in a few years' time, His Holiness is not pulling out the German-Chinese dictionary to translate Mit Brennender Sorge into Mandarin.