Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association - CPCA and The Beijing Government

CPCA and The Beijing Government

Officially, religious organizations in mainland China today must be government-recognized and approved, though many unofficial unregistered organizations do in fact exist. The Government of China wants no organization in mainland China owing allegiance to "foreign influence", in this case, the Pope in Rome. Critics of the CPCA argue that it was created precisely to establish state control over Catholicism in mainland China.

The government rejects exercise of any authority by organs of the Catholic Church outside China after 1949, the year communists gained power over all of mainland China. CPCA, which was founded eight years later, thus does not recognize the proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Pope Pius XII in 1950, canonizations from 1949 onward (e.g. the canonization of Pope Pius X), Vatican declarations on even well-established devotional piety (e.g. on the Sacred Heart of Jesus or on Mary as Queen), and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). In practice, however, the Catholic Church in China uses Chinese translations of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church (revised in 1997) and of the 1970 Roman Missal. These had at first to be imported from Taiwan and Hong Kong, but have been printed locally for some years.

Due to CPCA pressure, Mass continued for some years after Pope Paul VI's 1969 revision of the Roman Missal to be celebrated in mainland China in the Tridentine Mass form, and for lack of the revised text in Latin or Chinese, even priests who refused any connection with the CPCA kept the older form. As the effects of the Cultural Revolution faded in the 1980s, the Mass of Paul VI began to be used, and at the beginning of the next decade the CPCA officially permitted the publication even locally of texts, originally prepared in Taiwan, that brought the Mass liturgy into line with that in use in other countries. Since the Canon of the Mass is now said aloud, observers have been able to check that the Pope is prayed for by name (a traditional test of unity and loyalty) even by those priests who, at least externally, accept directions from the CPCA, leading to the conclusion that "there is only one Catholic Church in China, whether state-recognized or so-called underground, they have the same faith, and the same doctrine."

The policy of the PRC government, as was that of communist governments in other countries, has been to reserve to the state the regulation of all social activities. Thus the CPCA prevents the Catholic bishops in China from speaking out publicly even against laws that gravely contravene Catholic moral teaching, such as those enforcing abortion and artificial contraception.