02 10 2024
A new report highlights the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to assert “total control” over the Catholic Church and other religious groups within China, aiming to “forcibly eliminate religious elements” that conflict with its political agenda.
The analysis, released last week by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), claims that the CCP’s “sinicization of religion” policy repeatedly violates the internationally recognized right to religious freedom.
According to the report, Chinese authorities have ordered the removal of crosses from churches and replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with pictures of President Xi Jinping. Religious texts have been censored, clergy members have been pressured to promote CCP ideology, and churches are required to display party slogans.
In an effort to bring religions under party control, the government forces religious groups to join “patriotic religious associations” and their local branches. For Catholic churches, this means membership in the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China, which is overseen by China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs and the CCP’s United Front Work Department.
Anyone practicing religion outside of these state-approved associations is labeled a member of a “cult” and faces legal action under anti-cult laws. This policy has led to widespread arrests and imprisonment, particularly targeting underground Catholics who refuse to recognize government-appointed clergy and the alteration of their faith.
USCIRF Commissioner Asif Mahmood told CNA that the CCP considers underground Catholics to be a threat because they do not recognize the government’s purported authority “to dictate religious doctrine and regulate religious affairs.”
In the end, the Chinese government is primarily focused on enforcing absolute loyalty and devotion to the CCP, its political objectives, and its vision for religion, rather than safeguarding the religious freedom of Catholics.
“Authorities continue to disappear underground Catholic religious leaders who reject the state-controlled Catholic church, including Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin and Bishop Augustine Cui Tai,” Mahmood said. “The government also refuses to disclose the whereabouts of Catholic leaders who have been disappeared for decades, like Bishop James Su Zhimin.”
Nina Shea, the director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and a former commissioner of the USCIRF, told CNA that the CCP is “trying to sever the Catholic Church in China from the pope.”
“Catholic bishops are special targets because of their essential role within the hierarchical Church in ensuring communion with the successor of St. Peter,” Shea said. “Those who resist [government intrusion] are placed in indefinite detention without due process, banished from their episcopal sees, placed under indefinite security police investigation, disappeared, and/or prevented from exercising their episcopal ministries.”
The CCP’s attempts to control religion go beyond Catholics, targeting Protestants, Muslims, Taoists, Buddhists, and followers of Chinese folk religions as well.
