“We need to pray, pray, and pray,” says Joseph Kung, a relative of the late persecuted Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei and the President of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, a U.S.-based organization that works to support the persecuted underground Church in China and expose the abuse. “It is very much ongoing and getting worse,” he said.
Rome, of course, has repeatedly tried to reach out to the Chinese regime and continues to do so. But so far little serious progress has been made. Much of the true Church loyal to Rome remains underground as the regime’s bishops – many of whom are actually secretly in union with the Holy See – manage the government-sanctioned Church. Unfortunately, however, the open Chinese Church is often run in ways that are contradictory to Catholic doctrine. If it took a firm stand, the government would almost certainly seek to quash it once and for all.
Christians in General
Government-run Protestant churches are controlled by the “Three-self Patriotic Movement” and the “China Christian Council.” And like the underground Catholic Church in China, the vast networks of “illegal” house churches they have established across the country are increasingly being brutally suppressed by the regime.
Prior to the most recent crackdown, many house churches had found a little bit of breathing room – especially because local officials saw how much good they did in their communities. While local authorities in some areas looked the other way, more than a few congregations even managed to acquire property and construct modest church buildings.
But that might be coming to an end. Last year was a particularly terrible time for members of the Shouwang Church in Beijing, one of China’s largest house churches. Congregants, however, led by their brave senior Pastor Jin Tianming, have remained defiant in the face of adversity and persecution.
“The devil Satan has taken advantage of the authority God has granted to the national government and is seeking to destroy God’s church,” Pastor Tianming wrote in a letter to parishioners urging them to gather for the planned Easter celebration last year. “His devil’s claws have finally been revealed. Satan get thee behind me!”
On Easter Sunday, dozens of parishioners, having been warned by officials not to celebrate mass, gathered anyway. Almost half of the church’s faithful and even the pastor had already been placed on house arrest to prevent the celebration. But that did not stop the Christians from coming out.
When they arrived for mass, police were already waiting. The parishioners were arrested en-mass and stuffed onto busses by the regime, singing hymns as they awaited their fate at the hands of the dictatorship’s functionaries. At Christmas, the church faced similar persecution.
The government, as usual, responded to global criticism of the crackdown by downplaying the significance of the operation, saying merely that the church had no “legal basis” to exist. Across China, house churches are increasingly being suppressed, harassed, threatened and coerced. And experts don’t see the situation improving on its own – especially as Christianity continues to grow.
Dissidents
Christians are hardly alone in their victimization – the increasingly paranoid communist regime has plenty of other religious and political targets. The Muslim Uyghur community, Buddhist monks, and countless others are vigorously pursued and oppressed by the nation’s communist rulers as well.
Critics of the dictatorship and advocates of various causes – human rights, Taiwan’s continued independence, freedom for Tibet, ethnic separatists in Eastern Turkistan – all are also routinely targeted. Christians who vocally stand up for human rights – people such as Gao Zhisheng, Fan Yafeng, Jian Tianyong and Tang Jingling – are said to be near the top of the regime’s list of perceived enemies.
Even regular patriotic Chinese citizens routinely face moral outrages. China’s brutal “one-child policy,” for example, is often used to force women to have abortions. And the internet, as many Westerners know, is tightly monitored and controlled.
But practitioners of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong are among the dictatorship’s most ruthlessly persecuted victims, undergoing torture, “re-education,” arbitrary detainment, and worse. As experts and investigators have documented extensively, Falun Gong prisoners often have their organs harvested by the regime to sell on the black market.
