The evidence is mounting that China is expanding its campaign against the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, Muslim minority. Testimonials of survivors describe torture and near-starvation at the province’s so-called “re-education centers.” Investigative reports detail the state’s separation of Uighur children from their families and forced attendance at high-walled kindergartens. Academic research has unearthed state documents showing this campaign is deliberate and escalating.My impression is that, in contrast, Catholics have been forced to remove crosses and crucifixes from the outside of church buildings, there are restrictions on steeple height, and in some cases, overzealous officials have forced church demolitions -- but so far, there are no re-education camps. I assume the Vatican is fully aware of conditions in China, for Catholics and other Christians, as well as for groups like the Uighurs. None of this is cause for celebration.. . . Last summer, United Nations investigators estimated that 1 million Uighurs were in the camps. In May, Randall Schriver, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security, estimated that at least 3 million Uighurs are being detained. (Other U.S. officials tell me this larger estimate includes people who are compelled to visit a re-education facility but still live in their homes.)
But I mentioned Pius XII yesterday. I read and speak German, and I've been interested in the country's modern history, Catholics under the National Socialist regime were in a precarious situation. Accounts from ordinary officers in the armed forces indicate that even regular attendance at mass could bring unwelcome attention from the Gestapo, as Catholics were felt to have better informal networks that could, and did, lead to assassination conspiracies, however feckless they all proved to be.
Pius XII was fully aware of the measures the National Socialists took against the Jews, and as a diplomat who'd spent years in Germany earlier in his career, he fully understood they were capable of further measures against Catholics -- which Bismark had undertaken in the Kulturkampf. The issues on which Pacelli compromised with Hitler in 1934 were of long standing in that context.
Pacelli himself, as a diplomat, went on to strike a much-criticized deal with Hitler’s Third Reich in 1934, after six months of talks. Again, the removal of Catholics from political life, including the decimation of the Center Party, formed part of a deal that offered concessions on Catholic education and law. But just as the Italian Catholics turned to the fascists when their political outlet was shut down, so too the Germans lurched towards Hitler’s Nazi Party. Long before he was Pope, Pacelli was accused of giving Vatican sign-off to German control of coveted regions, in return for other political favours.I think Pius was acutely aware of the atmosphere in Berlin, and the potential for anti-Catholic measures much more severe than those in place must have been in his mind. I think he also had to be aware of the unrealistic nature of Catholic plots to decapitate the Third Reich and the potential for widespread retribution against Catholics that could potentially ensue. The link above gives some insight into Francis's thinking:
Pope Francis says the church is confident that the papacy would withstand the findings by historians’ studying the archives, saying Pius was “criticized, one can say, with some prejudice and exaggeration.”I have a sense that Francis has more than a little sympathy for the dilemmas Pius faced, because it's fairly clear that he faces similar dilemmas in China.“The church isn’t afraid of history, on the contrary, it loves it, and would like to love it even more, like it loves God,” Francis said. “Thus, with the same trust of my predecessors, I open, and entrust to researchers, this patrimony of documentation.”
He said the Pius papacy included “moments of grave difficulties, tormented decisions of human and Christian prudence, that to some could appear as reticence.” Instead, he said they could be seen as attempts “to keep lit, in the darkest and cruelest periods, the flame of humanitarian initiatives, of hidden but active diplomacy” aimed at possibly “opening hearts.”
Ms Littlejohn is a puzzling case. Certainly she didn't discover the Chinese one child policy or the existence of forced abortion; that's been known for decades, while she didn't even take the name Reggie Littlejohn until about 2009. US presidents of both parties have spoken out against the one child policy and forced abortion. The question is what anyone has been able to do about it, and this is no different from the dilemmas Pius XII faced with the Holocaust.
Things could be much worse for Catholics in China, as they could have been for Catholics in Germany under Hitler. Francis is clearly aware of the issues.
