On the day when Fr. Joseph Liao Hongqing was to be ordained the "official" bishop of the Meixian diocese in China's Guangdong province, local officials of the state-run Catholic Patriotic Association thought they had the situation under control.
Fr. Liao had been approved by both the pope and Chinese authorities, but eyewitnesses say local officials were vigilant. Fr. Liao was not allowed to use his mobile phone prior to the ceremony, and other priests and nuns were kept at a distance. Local government officials were keen to control the moment in the ceremony when the presiding bishop was to read the official appointment document from the pope. Instead, a document was read declaring that the new bishop had been appointed by the Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church in China, a body not recognized by the Vatican.
Officials were shocked and local Catholics amazed, however, when the newly consecrated bishop announced--in a hesitant and low voice--that he had been appointed by the pope and that he pledged loyalty to the Vatican.
Bishop Liao is not alone. It's estimated that some 90 percent of the 70-some official bishops who fall under the control of the Communist Party have secretly or openly sought and been granted legitimization by the pope. However, many hide this fact from their flocks and the authorities to avoid problems with the government.
Bishop Liao's brave statement came just two weeks after a bishop in China's underground church issued a controversial open letter to fellow Catholics. In "A Letter to My Friends," Bishop Han Zhihai made a rare call on priests in both the "official" and "unofficial" churches to come out of the closet and publicly confirm their allegiance to the Vatican. Bishop Han hinted that once Catholic allegiances were made clear, Catholics would be able to proceed down the road toward restoring the unity of the church in China.
This is not how things were supposed to work when the communist government began its assault on the religion in the early 1950s. Shortly after taking power, the party began arresting and deporting foreign clergy. The Catholic Patriotic Association was established in 1957, with a mission more focused on persecution than propagation of the faith. Its first task was to deal with Chinese who refused to split with the Vatican. Clergy and laity were imprisoned, beaten and some were even killed, driving Catholics loyal to the pope underground. During the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), even official Catholics suffered for their beliefs, as state churches were shut down and converted to warehouses and factories, with some priests forced to marry.
But some five decades of state control and often brutal oppression have failed to destroy the underground church, which is alive and kicking. Today the unofficial church numbers an estimated 8 million members, compared to 4 million for the state church.
More important, recent anecdotal evidence suggests that the political issues that have divided the underground and official Catholics for five decades are beginning to fade as Catholics on both sides step up their cooperation. One analyst says that as many as 70 percent of priests in the official church have also been secretly ordained in the underground church.
"The line between underground and official church is indeed blurring," says Richard Madsen, professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego, and an expert on the Catholic church in China. "For the church this is a good thing. But not necessarily for the government. The government may be afraid that more people in the official church are becoming more like the underground in their beliefs and attitudes than people in the underground church becoming like the official church."
"What's happening is the opposite of what the government wants," said a well-known European scholar of the Catholic church in China who, because of the sensitivity of the topic, requested anonymity. "The government wants to hold on to the church and control it."
It's clear that a growing number of Catholics are now practicing their faith in a gray area. Although a large number of underground Catholics have traditionally avoided any contact with the state church, more and more believers are floating between the two churches, attending a state service one week, an underground Mass the next. And in some areas where local authorities are open-minded or apathetic, the two groups use the same venues for services, albeit often separately. In one instance last year, official and underground priests in one diocese concelebrated the Eucharist. In another diocese, the official and unofficial bishops are living in the same house, wearing different titles.
The state has allowed some 200 official priests to go to the United States to study and work in American parishes to gain experience. Unofficial priests, also known as hei shenfu or black priests, go quietly to America and Europe for the same purpose, without government approval. Catholics in China say their priests who study in the United States get to know each other well and when they come back, it's easier for them to cooperate.
Official Catholics--both laity and clergy--are openly expressing their resentment of the Catholic Patriotic Association. The organization is controlled by different people in different areas--bishops in some places, lay people, usually atheists, in others. In one predominantly Muslim area, the association leaders are Muslims. In January 2000, when the Catholic Patriotic Association attempted to carry out the ordination of five bishops not approved by Rome, the move backfired. Sources say the plan originally called for a larger number of priests to be elevated, but many refused to take part in the ceremony, as did teachers and seminarians at the National Seminary in Beijing.
But all is not smooth. Conservative members of the underground church who have suffered for decades remain fiercely skeptical of the official church, and many have worked against reconciliation. Bishop Han wrote that underground priests long feared that the Catholic Patriotic Association would bring about a schism by-attempting to create an independent Chinese Catholic church. He said he and his fellow priests had long refused to join them in religious services and encouraged other Catholics to do the same.
The extent of this division was illustrated on Good Friday last year when 1,000 Catholics attended services in the official St. Joseph's Cathedral in Tianjin, an hour from Beijing. At the same time, another 200 underground Catholics held their own liturgy at the Marian shrine inside the compound, refusing to have anything to do with the official congregation inside the church. Their leader, Bishop Stephen Li, who was recognized by the state as a priest but not a bishop, was banished to a church in a remote mountain area. An overseas Catholic news service reported that the unofficial group has been praying at the shrine for 10 years and that the government was aware of the situation.
"The community inside the church is run by communists," a bystander told a reporter from the overseas Union of Catholic Asian News, adding that he believed the souls of Catholics who worship inside the church will go to hell. Hundreds of Catholics traveled several hours to the mountain church to celebrate the holiday with Bishop Li.
Recognizing the poor facilities at the underground seminaries, many seminarians loyal to Rome attend a state seminary but then refuse ordination by the official bishop, returning to an underground church for the ceremony. Older underground Catholics who have suffered for remaining loyal to the Vatican are especially irked to see state seminaries get funding from overseas Catholic organizations and state priests granted funding to study in foreign seminaries while their own training is inadequate.
It's no surprise that underground Catholics remain wary of the official church. They continue to face harassment, arrest and even death in Chinese prisons. Unregistered churches are routinely torn down in some areas. In June, the Vatican lashed out against the arrest of several underground bishops, but government authorities denied any knowledge of this.
Some Catholics who are passionate anticommunists do not have confidence in the Vatican's ability to negotiate with the government and are working against any sort of reconciliation. According to one analyst, there are also factions in the Vatican that are an obstacle to rapprochement.
The government has been keen to take advantage of these divisions. Madsen says that the government began to "foment polarization" in 2000, in what he called "the old policy of making people 'draw a clear line' between the good people and the enemy.
"That didn't work too well, and there was a period of some relaxation," Madsen said, adding that since then there have been alternating periods of "relaxation and tightening."
The split between the two churches poses a challenge to the future of the church in China, but there is a growing sense that reconciliation is necessary and unavoidable. The Vatican has for years been encouraging the two sides to unite, arguing that Catholics on both sides have suffered for their faith.
"Rome is beginning to understand that some of the priests and bishops who joined the open church did it as a commitment to the church," said the European authority on the church in China. He said their reasoning at the time was, "If we don't do it, the church may disappear, and we will have to go completely underground."
The divisions may weaken over the next decade as aging Catholics pass from the scene. The younger generation, those who didn't live through the Cultural Revolution and are unburdened by the memories of past harsh oppression, feel less hostility toward the state church. Observers believe that absent a major faux pas by the open church, reconciliation of the Catholic church is in the making.
Maryknoll Sr. Betty Ann Maheu, who does research on the Catholic church in China at the Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong and who just returned from a fact-finding trip to churches around China, is optimistic about the future. "The divisions are political and not doctrinal, and that's important," she said.
And clergy like Bishop Han will likely lead the way. In his open letter, he admitted that "some doubts still linger on in my heart" about the attitude of the Catholic Patriotic Association regarding ties with the Holy See. But he said he was very encouraged by the fact that the vast majority of bishops, priests and Catholics are united in the same faith and with the pope. "We must admit the fact that a new situation is emerging for the church in China, which calls on us to take new initiatives," he wrote.
Sr. Maheu praised the young bishop's courage to write a letter speaking for reconciliation. She called his letter "a ray of hope." She said, "Time has a way of healing things."