Posted on 02/13/2018 6:46:08 PM PST by marshmallow
ROME, February 13, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen issued another strongly-worded criticism today of the Vatican’s proposed deal with China’s Communist regime, suggesting it would amount to a papal endorsement of schism.
“There is no reason to fear a schismatic church created by the [Communist] party. It will fade with the collapse of the regime,” he wrote. “But a schismatic church with the Pope’s blessing will be horrible!”
Cardinal Zen’s comments came this morning in response to a recent interview with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin, published in the Italian daily La Stampa. Zen posted his commentary on his blog in both Chinese and Italian.
Reading the interview “disgusts me,” the archbishop emeritus of Hong Kong said, accusing Cardinal Parolin of shedding “crocodile tears” for persecuted Catholics in China.
Parolin “adores Ostpolitik,” but he “despises the genuine faith of those who firmly defend the Church, founded by Jesus on the Apostles,” Zen said. Parolin professes to bring healing to persecuted Catholics in China through “the balm of mercy,” but in reality he is “rubbing salt in their wounds” by rewarding traitors, castigating the faithful, and “forcing a legitimate bishop to cede his post to an excommunicated one.”
The “most repugnant thing” Zen said he found in the interview was Parolin’s “dishonest exploitation” of Pope Benedict XVI’s Letter to Catholics in China. He accused the Vatican Secretary of State of “manipulating” the letter to make himself appear to be a “faithful supporter” of Benedict’s work, when he actually “thwarted all of Pope Ratzinger’s efforts to bring the Church in China back to the right path.”
In the lengthy blogpost, Cardinal Zen also spoke of his relationship with Pope Francis. He said he is sorry if his revelation of their private conversations caused the Holy.....
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Schismatic with one side being correct is better than unified and heretical.
I believe that is where Pope Benedict was going with his “smaller, poorer, but holier” comment.
That was apparently rejected on delivery.
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