In the 1950s, the Chinese Communist Party found itself face to face with a problem.
Christianity was spreading fast and becoming a nuisance, with Catholicism a particularly significant part of it.
Rather than merely fight these Catholics (although they did jail countless priests, many of them Irish) who were difficult to figure out due to the spread of the Legion of Mary and other lay led groups, the Chinese Communist Party chose to infiltrate them and co-opt them instead.
Since then, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association has been the established church of the Communist regime, allowing Communist officials to choose bishops and to run the church without interference from elsewhere.
The Patriotic Church to this day disowns most dogmas of the church and even supports things like abortion and contraception, in line with their masters. Meanwhile, those in the underground true church have suffered torture, sterilisation and imprisonment for their faith, with the CCP regularly destroying churches in crackdowns that have gone ignored as popular culture has chosen to focus instead upon Chinese Muslims. Such a scenario has echoes of the establishment of the Penal Laws, with a puppet church designed to serve Caesar rather than Christ.
This sort of an occurrence is relatively unique in the modern world, though the conditions that made this possible in China are becoming more familiar to Westerners now too thanks to the current heavily enforced restrictions and the prevailing madness surrounding gender theory and divisive Marxist racial politics. The most effective opposition to the current restrictions, to abortion and contraception, and the most measured and level headed and calm responses to racial tensions have come from Catholics both lay and clerical.
Events in recent days have raised questions about whether or not this incidence of a counterfeit church could happen in the United States of America.
Firstly, there was Fr. Leo O’Donovan SJ praising Biden before then saying his inauguration prayer in Washington DC.
We also had Fr. James Martin SJ seeming to take the side of anti Catholic thugs in Poland who have mocked Our Lady and attacked churches, echoing warmonger Samantha Power who has been making worrying noises about Poland and Hungary.
Most worrying of all, there has been the efforts of Cardinal Cupich and Archbishop Tobin to censor their colleague Archbishop Jose Gomez from speaking out against Biden’s pro abortion policies.
Catholic News Agency reports that Cupich wanted to come out and support Biden explicitly:
Three different bishops speaking on background to CNA said they were aware that Cardinal Cupich wanted a more supportive, clearly pro-Biden statement, and that he spent most of Wednesday trying to get the support of other bishops to come up with an alternative statement.
Acquiescence and collaboration to the powers that be is not an unprecedented occurrence in the church in the United States. Cardinal McCarrick was close to the inner circle of the Obama administration, even being drafted in by Biden for assistance with talks with Communist countries China and Cuba. New Cardinal Wlton Gregory is also a long term collaborator with Biden.
But Biden’s politics represent a particularly authoritarian nastiness when it comes to the Catholic faith. He has previously sued nuns to force them to pay for contraception, he has greatly expanded the role of abortion in the United States and he has caused unnecessary suffering on an unimaginable scale to Christians in the Middle East. For priests to collaborate with this regime they will inevitably reach a point where they will have to choose faux patriotism over piousness.
It is not outside the realms of possibility that the United States could see a split between those who wish to remain loyal to fantasies of Manifest Destiny and those who wish to remain loyal to Christ and to His church. Americans are sometimes convinced to buy into the idea that the sufferings of other nations could never land on their shores, but there is nowhere outside of China where such a clerical devotion to blatantly anti Catholic regimes exists.
In an interview today, former CIA Director John Brennan has stated that ‘religious extremists’ are now the targets of the intelligence community.
Will we see Catholics and prolifers ‘rooted out’ as Brennan threatens? It is quite clearly what he is suggesting.
Anyone to the right of the most extreme Democrats are now being talked about as internal enemies of the state, that list will soon include bishops and priests, we already know that Biden includes nuns. The current rhetoric is completely identical to that used to dehumanise the many innocent people who were imprisoned in Guantanamo during the 2000s as well as the estimated 1 million people (many of them Christian) who died because of the Iraq War.
Lest we forget, that same establishment were revealed in leaked emails to have:
Is it really outside the realms of possibility that they could go the extra step and form a patriotic church if opposition proved that problematic? The CIA have already done this in South America, using liberation theology and other groups to play Catholics off of one another for political ends, just as they did in other religions and countries.
If that time comes and Americans are pressured to be ‘Patriotic’ and to forego their religious duties, let them to take to heart the words of Pope Pius XII on the Chinese Communist Party’s church:
the Church exhorts and encourages Catholics to love their country with sincere and strong love, to give due obedience in accord with natural and positive divine law to those who hold public office, to give them active and ready assistance for the promotion of those undertakings by which their native land can in peace and order daily achieve greater prosperity and further true development.
The Church has always impressed on the minds of her children that declaration of the Divine Redeemer: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." We call it a declaration because these words make certain and incontestable the principle that Christianity never opposes or obstructs what is truly useful or advantageous to a country.
However, if Christians are bound in conscience to render to Caesar (that is, to human authority) what belongs to Caesar, then Caesar likewise, or those who control the state, cannot exact obedience when they would be usurping God's rights or forcing Christians either to act at variance with their religious duties or to sever themselves from the unity of the Church and its lawful hierarchy.
Under such circumstances, every Christian should cast aside all doubt and calmly and firmly repeat the words with which Peter and the other Apostles answered the first persecutors of the Church: "We must obey God rather than men."
With emphatic insistence, those who promote the interests of this association which claims a monopoly on patriotism, speak over and over again of peace and admonish Catholics earnestly to exert all their efforts to establish it. On the surface these words are excellent and righteous, for who deserves greater praise than the man who prepares the way to introduce and establish peace?
But peace - as you well know, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons - does not consist of words alone and does not rely on changing formulas which are suitable for the moment but contradict one's real plans and practices, which do not conform with the meaning and way of true peace but with hatred, discord, and deceit.
Peace worthy of the name must be founded on the principles of charity and justice which He taught who is the "Prince of Peace," and who adopted this title as a kind of royal standard for Himself. True peace is that which the Church desires to be established: one that is stable, just, fair, and founded on right order; one which binds all together - citizens, families, and peoples - by the firm ties of the rights of the Supreme Lawgiver, and by the bonds of mutual fraternal love and cooperation.
As she looks forward to and hopes for this peaceful dwelling together of nations, the Church expects each nation to preserve that degree of dignity which becomes it. For the Church, which has ever kept a friendly attitude toward the various events in your country, long ago spoke through Our late Predecessor of happy memory and expressed the desire that "full recognition be given to the legitimate aspirations and rights of the nation, which is more populous than any other, whose civilization and culture go back to the earliest times, which has, in past ages, with the development of its resources, had periods of great prosperity, and which - it may be reasonably conjectured - will become even greater in the future ages, provided it pursues justice and honor."[8]
On the other hand, as has been made known by radio and by the press, there are some - even among the ranks of the clergy - who do not shrink from casting suspicion on the Apostolic See and hint that it has evil designs toward your country.
Assuming false and unjust premises, they are not afraid to take a position which would confine within a narrow scope the supreme teaching authority of the Church, claiming that there are certain questions - such as those which concern social and economic matters - in which Catholics may ignore the teachings and the directives of this Apostolic See.
This opinion - it seems entirely unnecessary to demonstrate its existence - is utterly false and full of error because, as We declared a few years ago to a special meeting of Our Venerable Brethren in the episcopacy:
The power of the Church is in no sense limited to so-called 'strictly religious matters"; but the whole matter of the natural law, its institution, interpretation and application, in so far as the moral aspect is concerned, are within its power.
By God's appointment the observance of the natural law concerns the way by which man must strive toward his supernatural end. The Church shows the way and is the guide and guardian of men with respect to their supernatural end."