Results tagged “catholicchurch”

Chinese cash helps former Portuguese colony overtake US city's gaming revenues.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the letter’s consequences; there are people far more qualified to do that, and they will. For now, I’d just like to point out that - in a small way - the letter serves as a near total and complete repudiation of the rhetoric and methods of the Cardinal Kung Foundation. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Kung Foundation is an American non-profit whose stated goal is support of China’s underground Catholics; in reality, the foundation and its leader Joseph Kung have spent the better part of the last two decades agitating for more division among China’s Catholics (a stance which the Pope’s letter implicitly recognizes as contrary to his and the late John Paul II’s intentions). I outline some of this in my recent profile of Jin Luxian in the July/August issue of the Atlantic.

In a very unusual letter (English translation here) addressed to the "bishops, priests, consecrated persons and lay faithful" in mainland China, Pope Benedict XVI (and he's got a cool Chinese name too - 教宗本笃十六世) has openly hoped for a renewal of relations between China and the Vatican. In the letter, the Pope noted that "there are signs, in China too, of the tendency towards materialism and hedonism, which are spreading from the big cities to the entire country" and called on Chinese believers to remember that "the new evangelization demands the proclamation of the Gospel to modern man, with a keen awareness that, just as during the first Christian millennium the Cross was planted in Europe and during the second in the American continent and in Africa, so during the third millennium a great harvest of faith will be reaped in the vast and vibrant Asian continent".

video clip entitled "巴士阿叔, Bus Uncle" on YouTube.