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1. shinichi Post author14/03/2013 at 11:20 pm

   Church and China face critical tests

   by Peter Hartcher

   http://www.smh.com.au/comment/church-and-china-face-critical-tests-20130311-2fw52.html

   The elite of the Catholic Church enter a conclave in Rome on Tuesday to settle leadership and policy decisions that will decide its future. It’s not the only authoritarian institution in conclave today dealing with such matters.

   On the other side of the world, the Chinese Communist Party, which, like the Catholic Church, lays claim to the loyalties of a billion-plus people, is also finalising its leadership transition and new policy thrust.

   Each of these unelected elites relies on an historical mandate to exclusive powers. One claims power in the name of God, the other in the name of the proletariat.

   Both are driven by doctrine and traditionally claimed infallibility. Both occupy a sovereign state – the Vatican in the case of the Church, while the Communist Party is inseparable from the organs of state of the People’s Republic. And both meet at times

   Another common characteristic is that they are both proven stayers.

   The Roman Catholic Church is the world’s oldest organisation. The Chinese Communist Party is much younger at 64 years compared to two thousand, but it is the longest-running of any continuing dictatorship on the planet.

   Both have survived worse crises than the ones they now face. Yet it’s also true that neither has ever had to operate in a world as democratic and closely reported as today’s.

   This is not the first time the two institutions have been compared. A senior Chinese official drew parallels in a joke recorded in Richard McGregor’s 2010 book on China’s ruling party, The Party.

   The unnamed official had been appointed by Beijing to conduct informal contacts with the Vatican to explore the possibilities of diplomatic relations. It is no coincidence that the Vatican is one of the few states with which China has been unable to establish diplomatic ties.

   Wrote McGregor: “One of the unofficial Chinese intermediaries with Rome joked about the uncanny similarities between the Party and the Catholic church when he visited the Vatican in 2008.

   “‘We have the propaganda department and you have the evangelicals. We have the organisation (personnel) department and you have the College of Cardinals,’ he told a Vatican official.

   ‘What’s the difference, then?’ the official asked. The Chinese interlocutor replied, to hearty laughter all round: ‘You are God, and we are the devil.'”

   The Church, as a vessel for the teachings of Jesus, has been a profound source of inspiration and a force for good for countless people over many generations. The Chinese Communist Party has had its uses too; it has raised half a billion people out of poverty in the last three decades.

   Yet the devil has been having his way with both of them. Pope Benedict XVI said in 2010 that he was “shocked by the revelations” of sexual abuse by clergy, which he described as a “perversion that is hard to understand.”

   “It’s sad that church authorities were not sufficiently vigilant, fast and decisive to take the necessary measures. For all of this, we are in a moment of penitence,” he said.

   The penitence continues, without much evidence of serious, systemic remedial action. The Church has proven, so far, to be unable to deal with its crisis – a profound and persistent betrayal of its own mission, its own founder.

   This crisis of moral corruption is compounded by the crisis of financial corruption at the Vatican Bank, leaving the overall picture of an institution in fundamental disarray and paralysed in responding.

   Britain’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, resigned ahead of the papal conclave after the press reported claims of sexual misbehaviour. It was the first time that a cardinal has missed a conclave because of personal scandal, according to Vatican historian Ambrogio Piazzoni.

   China’s communist party, beset by endemic corruption, is in a crisis of its own. The outgoing premier Wen Jiabao last year warned that without urgent reform, “such historical tragedies as the Cultural Revolution may happen again”.

   The Cultural Revolution launched by Chairman Mao in 1966 unleashed violent chaos that set China’s development back by decades and killed many thousands. “Reform,” said Wen, “has reached a critical stage.”

   Wen’s warning was followed by the arrest and purge of one of the party’s cardinals, Bo Xilai. Bo is the son of one of the party’s “Eight Immortals,” the revolutionary leaders who created modern China. He was China’s commerce minister and then party chief of the megacity of Chongqing. He faces charges of sexual misconduct as well as financial corruption. His wife is charged with murdering a British businessman. His wild vigilante chief of police fled, in fear of his life, to seek asylum in a US consulate. The Bo scandal’s revelations of an elite living in flagrant violation of all laws, all morality and all restraint shook China’s political system to its core.

   The incoming president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to confront corruption, as all China’s rulers do. He will need to. A crescendo of popular outrage is building not only over corruption but over inequality and pollution.

   With stories of rampant corruption daily in the Chinese media – such as the minor official who scammed enough money to buy some 400 apartments and properties – how does the party pretend to adhere to China’s constitutional declaration of a “democratic dictatorship led by the working class”?

   An official of the Communist Party’s Central Party School, Deng Yuwen, wrote last year that China’s overarching problem is that the party confronts “a crisis over the legitimacy of its rule”. This is from within the upper reaches of the party itself.

   To deal with their crises, both the Church and the Party are widely urged to liberalise their conservative power structures if they hope to survive and prosper. But that runs against the deep autocratic instincts of both. Can such unwieldy autocratic institutions survive in a democratic era?

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