In 2018, Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview: “Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.”
He contrasted China with the more liberal America. “Liberal thought has dismissed the concept of the common good,” he said. “It does not even want to take it into account, it states that it is an empty idea, without any benefits. On the contrary, the Chinese, no, they propose work and the common good.”
Sanchez Sorondo may want to reconsider these statements. Last week, the New York Times revealed new details about the Chinese state’s mass internment of Uighur Muslims in the western province of Xinjiang. Over the last three years, an estimated one million people have been detained in prison camps, where they are subjected to “reeducation” and urged to abjure Islam. Documents leaked to the Times showed that this campaign of repression was organized after President Xi Jinping urged party leaders to show “absolutely no mercy” and to employ the “organs of dictatorship.”
The system by which detainees are selected combines big data with big brother. As the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists put it, “Chinese police are guided by a massive data collection and analysis system that uses artificial intelligence to select entire categories of Xinjiang residents for detention.”
Of course, the existence of such camps – among many other abuses — had already been reported when Sanchez Sorondo made his statement. At the time, Bernardo Cervellera, a China expert and head of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions’ news service, proposed that the bishop “read the daily news tracking violence, arrests of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists….”
The above comes from a Nov. 26 posting in First Things.
I wonder were he got his information
“Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.” I guess the Catholic Church is now a gulag-friendly, forced-abortion promoting, church demolishing/persecuting totalitarian organization. Thanks Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo. I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told me.
Oh great, our religious leaders are telling us that the teachings of the Catholic Church are best implemented by a dictatorship that destroys their own people. Our religious leaders destroyed their own people with their sex abuse scandals. Our religious leaders seem to be in agreement with China’s leaders on destroying their own people. Our religious leaders can’t be trusted with our altar boys. Our religious leaders can’t be trusted with our donations. Our religious leaders can’t be trusted to hand on to us the teachings that Jesus Christ gave to his Apostles. How did they become religious leaders anyway? Shouldn’t they be party bosses for a dictatorship?
Why doesn’t the Pope strongly denounce the horrific human rights and religious abuses of China? Why does he not strongly defend his oppressed Chinese Catholics? Where is his strong, public support, for persecuted David Daleiden?
It becomes more and more obvious to me that maybe part of the problem is our definitions and upbringing. In America what is conservative is a force for much good, defending faith, family and values, christianity itself in many cases and religious liberty for all, but throughout places like South America, conservatives dominated the people in the past. Hence Liberation Theology. I truly think this is why the Holy Father looks at Conservatives in some cases in a negative light. He simply does not understand us.
Chinese Communists do not seek the common good at all! And in the West, in the United States, our culture has been extremely “radicalized,” violently ripped to shreds, by anti-society, anti-Christian, selfish “hippie liberal-leftist activists”— and the concept of obeying GOD, following His laws, for the common good of our Nation–as expressed in our Biblical, Judeo-Christian foundations– is nearly gone! “Freedom” is a big responsibility, for mature adult citizens– not meant for immoral juvenile delinquents, criminals, (including those in politics!) and immoral, irresponsible liberal-leftists, to falsely interpret, for their own selfish interests!
So such a statement is approved by Pope Francis? That China does better than the U.S. at putting into practice the Church’s ” social doctrine”? Which begs the question: What social doctrine could Sanchez Sorondo possibly be referring to? What possible definition of “the common good” would fit Chinese policies? If Francis in fact approves this declaration, which evidently sees no problem in China’s destruction of its own people, the Pope has matched his abandonment of the sole adoration of God (the Pachamama worship in the Vatican) with a parallel abandonment of the Lord’s command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. This completes the rejection of the “first and greatest commandment” with rejection of the second, “which is like unto it.” Matthew 22:36-38
Roberta’s comment is much better than mine.
Each year in China, tens to hundreds of thousands of human organs are brutally cut out from the living bodies of religious and political prisoners, while they are awake, with no anesthesia, to sell for use in transplants and research. This generates big bucks for the Chinese governmnent.
The unbridled evil of communism knows no bounds.
How does someone with such ignorance (and that’s the most charitable way to interpret his remarks) rise to such a high level in the Church?
Perhaps by using hidden video cameras to capture incriminating evidence of certain Church officials molesting altar boys.