George Weigel’s latest column:

Some light was cast on the complexity of all this during a recent conversation I had with one of China’s most prominent Catholic laymen (who, for reasons of prudence, must remain anonymous). He confirmed that there had been a significant grassroots rapprochement between members of the PCA and members of the underground Church, as he confirmed that many PCA bishops had made submissions to Rome and now prayed publicly for, and in communion with, the Pope. This reconciliation, which was part of John Paul II’s China strategy, is detested by the Chinese regime; the recent episcopal ordinations and installations, which took place under duress, were in part an effort to reinsert wedges between PCA Catholics and underground Catholics.

My interlocutor made two other important points. First, in his view (which he believes Pope Benedict shares), no deal with the Beijing regime is better than a bad deal — and a bad deal, in these circumstances, means a deal in which the government’s role in the appointment of bishops is unacceptably intrusive. Second, and despite the regime’s ritual rants about Christianity-and-colonialism, Catholicism is immensely attractive in China because the Chinese people associate Christianity with modernization, with a more decent society, and with a better way of life.

All of which prompts the thought that a Vatican that “thinks in centuries” can well afford to bide its time in dealing with a regime that is only fifty-seven years old — a regime that, on my friend’s analysis, may unravel in the next decade or two.