Pope Benedict XVI has been snuggling up to China for some time. Yesterday he approved an expansion of a protocol with the CCP that expands the ability of the Communist government to have a say in the selection of Catholic bishops in China. One wonders if he read the new CCP vision of the Bible before for doing so.
Jack Fowler previewed the new "holey" book in his Weekend Jolt for National Review yesterday, October 3. As he notes, in doing so the CCP "... has taken more liberties than the crew of an aircraft carrier that’s been at sea for a year." Point taken. To illustrate his point, he gives the Red version of the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.
The moral of the original version is, of course, let he (or she - equal opportunity here) who is without sin throw the first stone. The CCP authorized version of the Bible transmogrifies this message, however, into:
"When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, 'I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.' "Gonna say close, but no cigar. Well, OK - not even by a country mile. Actually, I think you might agree that they turned the original meaning completely on its head. And that folks is the danger of giving the Red Chinese a bigger "voice" into how the Church does business in China. Will this become the authorized version for the Catholic Church in China. Will this be mandated in dioceses by the new bishops, even though the Vatican knows nothing of it? Who knows, but you can bet they are going to try.
The Church has always been at its best historically when it lives counter-culturally to the prevailing orthodoxy. That's why the Framers in this country enshrined separation of Church and State in the First Amendment. The purpose was not to protect the State from the Church, but rather the other way around. They were very familiar with the distortions of the Christian faith that occurred in England with the Anglican Church as the official State-sanctioned church, justifying political and evil actions in the same of God. The same distortions and worse will happen in China. That being said, perhaps lying down with the Dragon is not the wisest course for the Pope to follow.
