Abstract
As China exerts increasing influence on the world stage and particularly in the Asia Pacific region, the issue of religious freedom will become one of greater urgency. The struggle for religious freedom for China’s Catholic population provides a window into the impact that religious pluralism is having on the Chinese state, and the tensions between China’s leadership and the Vatican over freedom of religion for China’s Catholics provides an important test case for how China negotiates church/state relations within its own society. This article argues that the differing viewpoints on religious freedom found in the Catholic Church’s Vatican II documents, and China’s 1982 Constitution, are the origin of these tensions. The article then examines Huntington’s Third Wave theory of democratization, updated by Philpott, to examine how the tensions between the Chinese state and the Catholic Church, which has a successful history of challenging communist states, are being played out.
Highlights
On May 22, 2013, Pope Francis, addressing crowds in Rome for his Wednesday audience, called on Catholics around the world to pray for Chinese Catholics in light of the challenges they face (Francis, 2013)
Catholics in the Chinese diocese of Shanghai continued to wait for the return of their bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, who went into long-term “spiritual retreat” after denouncing the Chinese government’s Patriotic Catholic Association, the government-sanctioned Catholic church in China, during his ordination to the office of bishop in 2012 (Phillips, 2013)
Yang (2013) and Lian (2013) have made important contributions to the topic of religious freedom in China: Yang setting out a research agenda for further work on the topic, and Lian tracing the efforts of Chinese Protestant intellectuals who have highlighted the need for greater human rights
Summary
On May 22, 2013, Pope Francis, addressing crowds in Rome for his Wednesday audience, called on Catholics around the world to pray for Chinese Catholics in light of the challenges they face (Francis, 2013). As a number of excellent book length studies already cover Sino-Vatican relations since 1949, this article will provide only a brief review of this history before analyzing more recent developments (see Chu, 2012; Leung, 1992; Madsen, 1998) Another element pertinent to relations between the Vatican and China, which will be examined in this article, is the way in which the Roman Catholic Church has a strong tradition, especially since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), of supporting freedom of religion. Daniel Philpott (2005) has utilized Huntington’s thesis to show how the Vatican responds when confronted with regimes that seek to limit the practice of Catholicism within their borders These theories will be examined in greater detail below. Before looking at the contemporary strains between the Vatican and the Chinese government, it is important to contextualize this friction with a concise summary of Catholicism in China
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