17 21, June, 2020 catholicweekly.com.au E ditorial & letters Dorin’s World Send your letters to:
[email protected] By the post: The Editor, Level 13, 133 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA Writer’s comment on protests a bridge too far D r Kevin Donnelly’s article ‘The destructive blindness of #BlackLivesMatter’ ( The Catholic Weekly , 10 June 2020) is unworthy of your publication and quite at odds with the response of Pope Francis. It would take too long to list all the un- truths, distortions and misdirections in Dr Donnelly’s piece. It starts with the amazing assertion that the Black Lives Matter movement represents ‘an even more destructive and insidious infection’ than the virus that, to date, has claimed more than 400,000 lives worldwide and brought the glob- al economy to its knees. Dr Donnelly’s reference to ‘the deadly and infectious China virus’ is offensive and verges on racism. His claim that the police who knelt in solidarity with demonstrators were ‘sub- mitting on bended knee to an illegal and rowdy mob’ is a cynical distortion. The Bishop of El Paso knelt in solidarity too ( The Catholic Weekly , 5 June), and Pope Francis rang to congratulate him per- sonally. Dr Donnelly, we assume, would have been able to set both the Bishop and the Pope straight. Dr Donnelly asserts that the police – all of them, apparently – ‘are now com- plicit in politically correct virtue signal- ling and turning a blind eye to wanton illegality and vandalism’. He can’t have been watching the same newscasts I did, if that’s what he thinks he saw. Police officers doing their best in very tough circumstances will be thrilled to hear his opinion of their work. But the central issue is that Dr Don- nelly scarcely even tries to engage with the reality – that these worldwide pro- tests have erupted in response to injus- tice and racism. Claiming that there is a high incidence of crime and violence in Black communities does not refute this fact – it merely demands that we ask, without excusing it, why the crime and violence exists. If any Australians wonder why they are being told that Black lives matter, they only need to remember the more than 400 Indigenous deaths in custody since 1991, the agonising history of ab- duction and brutality, the stolen wages and the systematic marginalisation that has been inflicted on our Indigenous brothers and sisters. The Catholic Weekly is the newspaper of the largest archdiocese in Australia. Its readers – especially those in schools – deserve much better than this inflam- matory, near-racist farrago. It is contrary to the words and actions of Pope Francis and his predecessors and those of Aus- tralia’s bishops. David Brennan Earlwood NSW I’m appalled you published Donnelly protests article W hy would you even publish Kevin Donnelly’s piece on BlackLivesMatter, reeking of confirmation bias? What horrible motives there are behind this. I’m so disappointed that you support such propaganda. This piece and your publication’s sup- port of it is why the Church will contin- ue to become less and less relevant to fair-minded people. Why would we seek the church for social justice when this position is stated? Since when is social justice not our concern, or duty or care even as Catho- lics? This article is not just offensive, hor- rifically tone-deaf and decisive. It could very well have been lifted from the archives of early century publi- cations. We are called to stand where Jesus would rise, and he would not stand with you on this. You and the author should take the ar- ticle down and apologise. This is not about cultivating the art of disagreeing or challenging ideas of com- mentators, this is about pushing racial prejudice and discrimination. This is per- petrator behaviour and, frankly, it is dis- gusting. I am just appalled. Elizabeth Hukins Sydney NSW Academic’s comment was truly disgraceful K evin Donnelly’s article on Black- LivesMatter is disgraceful. You should seriously consider the facts before you let so-called academ- ics like Kevin publish such rubbish in our faith-based circulation. No wonder there is such a move away from the Catholic faith. I am a practicing Catholic and my 22-year-old daughter read this and stated, “Ahh good one Catholic Weekly. I think the biggest white privi- lege comes from the churches. Would rather channel my time into social justice.” I am ashamed that you would allow this to happen and will be notifying my networks of such ignorance. Paul Hussein Yerin Aboriginal Health Services Limit- ed, Wyong NSW No-one is bound to desert China’s faithful W hat help can the Church’s baptised expect from the Vatican (as opposed to the Church itself) should they ever find their faith seri- ously facing persecution from a government with whom ambitious Vatican monsignori wish to reach a diplomatic ‘accommodation?’ In light of the provisional agreement reached between the People’s Republic of China and the Vatican in 2018, the question is neither obtuse nor irrelevant. One of the poten- tial answers is deeply disturbing because the answer may be ‘little’ or ‘none’. Even worse is the possibility that such diplo- mats could be willing, ultimately, to effectively abandon the men, women, children, religious, priests and bishops who have remained heroically faithful to the Church over near- ly a century – should those diplomats decide that such an abandonment is what it takes to reach their long-hoped-for accommodation. If this was ever to turn out to be the truth a major scandal and a tragedy would undoubtedly have transpired in the Church. The question at the beginning of this editorial is actually the question on the mind of every seriously interested par- ty and observer of the agreement forged in 2018 between Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and - ul- timately - Xi Jinping, the details of which remain secret to this day. Setting aside for a moment the question of why it is secret and why the adult baptised of the Church are not allowed to know at least the important details (are we not adult enough?), the gravest concerns surrounding the whole affair continue to multiply. With the estimated 12-15 millionmainland Chinese Cath- olics clearly on his mind, especially the millions of faithful underground Catholics, retired Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong has been trenchantly and devastatingly critical of the agreement, the process which led to it and its effects. Car- dinal Parolin, he has bluntly toldmedia, is misleading Pope Francis on the whole issue. Cardinal Zen is dismayed by the seeming abandonment of the faithful underground Church by the Vatican. And he is not the only one. Speaking to media inMarch he said the agreement has created despair among faithful Chinese Catholics. “When many of my brothers in despair come to me for advice, I tell them: Don’t criticise those who follow the guideline from Rome. But since the guideline leaves room for objection of conscience, you can quietly retire into the state of catacombs and don’t resist by force to any injustice, you could only suffer more losses.”The last Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, basically agrees and is on record as stating that the Vatican “got it badly wrong on China” and that he is deep- ly sympathetic to the position of Cardinal Zen, whose book For Love of My People I Will Not Remain Silent on the Vatican and China was published by Ignatius Press late in 2019. Last week the remarkable laywoman, Audrey Don- nithorne, passed away in Hong Kong at the age of 95 (see obituary P24) . Born and raised in China, the English-ed- ucated convert maintained a lifelong love affair with the country of her birth and went on to become a global expert in Chinese political and economic affairs and the state and progress of Christianity and the Catholic Church in China. “The resumption of diplomatic relations between Chi- na and the Holy See will probably come eventually, but in God’s time, in this millennium or the next,” she wrote in her autobiography China - In Life’s Foreground , published in Australia in 2019. “Also, we must bear in mind that, perhaps, the greatest long-term danger to the Church in China may come not from government oppression but from govern- ment patronage and that, as in the fourth century West, the switch from one to the other might arrive with surprising speed. Such a development would be facilitated by any con- cession made by the Holy See to allow the Chinese govern- ment a role in the appointment of bishops.” Seen at this distance, Ms Donnithorne’s remarks, taken in conjunction with the readings of experts such as Cardinal Zen, former Governor Chris Patten and numerous others intimately more familiar with matters Chinese than Vati- can diplomats, seem almost prescient. “Be as innocent as doves,” Christ famously told his followers, exhorting them at the same time to be as wise as serpents in their dealings with others. It’s a shame that despite the overwhelming evi- dence of official persecution of Christianity - and others - by Xi Jinping’s regime, Vatican diplomats such as Cardinal Pa- rolin seem to have taken only half of those words to heart in dealing with Xi and the comrades. If so, those who are pay- ing the price are the baptised faithful, religious and clergy of China and this, ordinarily, would be called a tragedy. But perhaps, like Marx, we could also accurately call it a farce. LETTERS