Magister reprints an interview with a China observer:

The interview is with Fr. Gianni Criveller, of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions. He is one of the leading experts on China, lives in Hong Kong, and is one of the brains behind the “Holy Spirit Study Centre,” a prominent point of observation on the Chinese Church.

Q: Do you consider this a non-negotiable point?

A: Exactly! The appointment of bishops, who are pastors of the ecclesial community, belongs to the Holy Father. The Holy See can certainly express its hope that the bishops elected would receive the consensus of the local Churches, and even of the local civil authorities. But this must absolutely not come to the point of limiting the pope’s prerogatives, or of granting negotiation or veto rights over candidates. Most of all, only in this way, only with this clarity can the “underground” Catholic communities be reconciled with those registered with the government. Concession on this point risks, in my view, prolonging the process of reconciliation in the Chinese Church, or opening fresh wounds within it. The bishops of China must be able to meet together without the presence of outside parties; to establish freely the agenda of their meetings; to decide as they wish; to communicate their message to the faithful. I cannot imagine any eventual diplomatic accords that would not guarantee freedom at least to the bishops. They would have to be able to go to Rome for their “ad limina” visits, as all the other bishops of the world do. It should no longer happen, as unfortunately has occurred twice, that the pope would invite the Chinese bishops to a synod in Rome, and that they would be prevented from going. The pope should be able to communicate directly and freely with the bishops of China, to appoint some of them as members of the Roman dicasteries, and even to honor some of them by making them cardinals.

Q: You are raising the price of an agreement by no small degree…

A: But this is how the Church functions all over the world! The freedom of the bishops should be the minimal condition. In realty, many more aspects of ecclesial life are disturbed by the religious policies of the Chinese government. The most serious of these is the abusive infiltration of all, or nearly all, of the Church’s structures by the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which, in the final analysis, is a political instrument of the United Front of the Communist Party. Furthermore, there is the control over the Church’s daily life exercised by the functionaries of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (this is the current name of the Office of Religious Affairs). There are many arbitrary restrictions that affect admission and teaching in the seminaries, the free preaching of moral teaching in church, baptism of babies in Christian families, and freedom of association for Catholics… But I realize that it is impossible to obtain guarantees in these matters from the current regime.

And at Get Religion, dpulliam says the recent TIME piece on Christianity in China is okay, but he’d like to know more about pseudo-Christian groups that are growing and have, of course, been a problem in China in the past.

Jen Ambrose has a post on another Christian figure who’s been very active in China of late.