A REPORT FROM CHINA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 942, 30 August 1957, Page 11

A REPORT FROM CHINA

Sir,-I should like to draw attention to the entirely misleading impression given by the reporting, on the 9.0 p.m. news on August 3, by the NZBS, of an item emanating from the Peking radio to the effect that the "Roman Catholic" Church in China had declared its independence from the Vatican in matters jurisdictional, Those of us who know from eye-wit-nesses what is happening to the Catholic Church in Communist China can interpret the news I refer to correctly, but the New Zealand public does not know sufficient about either the situation in China or the nature of the Catholic Church to see through the Communist broadcast without the addition of comment. It is well known that terms used by Communists do not correspond in meaning to the same terms used by free democratic speakers (e.g., the term "democracy" itself), and that any news item from Communist radio sources needs to be clarified where such terms are used. In the present instance it is not at all the "Roman Catholic" Church which the Peking radio ig talking about, but a counterfeit body of Communist creation to which it is hoped to attract the allegiance of Catholics in an endeayour to subvert the Church. The bona fide Catholic Church in China is still, as ever, in union at all levels with the Holy See. With the bishops and most of the priests in prison or other kind of detention, the main burden of keeping the Church alive is falling on the faithful laity, who are being subjected to every kind of pressure to make them apostatise. Nomenclature notwithstanding, the Association now set up by Peking is not the Catholic Church, nor in anv wav its representative.

J. C. P.

LAND

(Cambridge).