China Arresting Catholics

[Annie]

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/11295800.htm

Vatican says Catholics arrested in China

Associated Press


VATICAN CITY - The Vatican said Saturday that Chinese authorities have carried out a new series of arrests of officials from that country's non-government controlled Catholic Church.

The most recent arrest occurred Wednesday, when a priest was picked up in Hebei, the same diocese whose bishop was arrested Jan. 3.

The statement said security forces also detained the 86-year-old bishop of Wenzhou, Monsignor James Lin Xili, on March 20 and two days later a lay official of the diocese.

China broke ties with the Vatican in 1951 and demands that Catholics worship only in churches approved by the state-controlled church group, which does not recognize the pope's authority. However, even state churches acknowledge the pope as a spiritual leader.

Many Chinese Catholics, however, remain fiercely loyal to Rome and risk arrest by worshipping in unofficial churches and private homes. The state church claims 4 million believers, but the Cardinal Kung Foundation, a U.S.-based religious monitoring group, has said the unofficial church has 12 million followers.

The pope's deteriorating health was front-page news across much of Asia but not in China, where the state-run media ignored it Saturday.

 

[onedomino]

Another Chinese Government outrage. These are the guys to which the EU, especially France, wants to sell weapons. The French are so profoundly anti-American, anti ordinary Chinese, and in contempt of Taiwanese democracy, that they are willing to sell advanced weapons to the unelected, atheist totalitarians running China at the point of a gun. Despicable.

 

[Annie]

Another Chinese Government outrage. These are the guys to which the EU, especially France, wants to sell weapons. The French are so profoundly anti-American, anti ordinary Chinese, and in contempt of Taiwanese democracy, that they are willing to sell advanced weapons to the unelected, atheist totalitarians running China at the point of a gun. Despicable.

Great minds work alike. I was just reading PE's nonsense over on that other thread!

 

[NATO AIR]

An Amnesty International Hong Kong member I am friends with (she is Christian herself) has mentioned the surging spread of Christianity across China, among Catholics and Protestants alike. The new pope and leaders of Protestant churches around the world must not forget these people nor let the Chinese get off scot free for oppressing, harming and torturing them.

As far as I am concerned, in the fight for freedom we see in places like China and Zimbabwe, Catholics and Protestants (and Muslims and Buddhists) should all be working together to counter the godless oppression of dictators and totalitarians.