‘Saints are being made every day in China’

By Catherine Sheehan

Catholics in China are currently suffering “intense persecution”, as they did in the 1950s after the communist regime first came to power, according to Dr Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute.

“If you’re Catholic in China, you’re a second-class citizen,” Dr Mosher said. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the underground Church or the Patriotic Church… You’re discriminated against simply because you’re a Catholic.”

Dr Mosher, who resides in California, was recently in Hobart to speak at the invitation of the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies. He spent ten years living and working as a social scientist in Asia, carrying out research in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan.

In an interview with the Catholic Standard, Dr Mosher said Catholic churches in China were being torn down and practice of the faith severely restricted.

“What has happened over the last four years is that some of the new churches that were built by people in the underground Church have been torn down… other churches that were built by the underground Church have been turned over to the Patriotic Church.”

Some churches are left in-tact, he said, for “propaganda purposes” but are stripped of all external signs of faith such as crosses or statues.

“They brought in cranes and they removed crosses from the tops of churches,” he said.

No one under the age of 18 is permitted to enter a Catholic church and celebration of the Mass is only allowed once a week on Sunday. Any other Masses are considered illegal.

Owning a Bible is prohibited and online access to Scripture blocked, however, it is permissible to read the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) version of the Bible, bereft of references to the afterlife.

“They don’t like revelations much. Communism is all about building paradise in the here and now… They’ve changed some of the Gospels significantly.”

“This is why the Patriotic Catholic Church is not a safe haven. It’s an instrument that’s being used to gradually try to deprive the Catholic people of their faith and replace it with faith in the Communist Party and the leaders of the Communist Party.”

All religions but particularly Catholicism had been persecuted in China since the communist regime seized control in 1949, he said, however the persecution had escalated since President Xi Jinping rose to power in 2013. Catholics have also faced further persecution since the signing of the Sino-Vatican Agreement in 2018.

“In the nineties and in the early years of this century we were able to build churches in China. We were able to open underground seminaries in China… the Church was basically unified.”

Following the signing of the Sino-Vatican Agreement, members of the underground Church were being forced to join the Patriotic Catholic Church which is controlled by the CCP.

Dr Mosher said because the deal between the Vatican and the CCP was secret, the terms are still unknown.

“We have managed to piece together that it deals mostly with the appointment of bishops… I think there are people in the Vatican who wanted a deal at any cost and I don’t think they understand quite who they’re dealing with.”

Formally an atheist, Dr Mosher converted to Catholicism after witnessing first-hand the horror of forced late-term abortions under China’s One Child Policy.

In 1979 he was the first American social scientist allowed into China to study how the country had changed politically, economically, and culturally after 30 years under communist rule.

When the One Child Policy came into force in 1980 he saw women who were seven, eight, or even nine months pregnant, arrested for having “illegal” children and forced to undergo abortions and sterilisation.

“Witnessing the deaths of tiny sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, I was confronted with an unimaginable horror. It was as if the pit of hell had opened up before me. This was evil in its purest form,” he said.

As a result of the One Child Policy there was “massive infanticide”, particularly of baby girls, and the suicide rate among young women skyrocketed.

Confronted with such evil he began to question the meaning of life, and eventually found his way to the Catholic Church.

“I didn’t want to live in this kind of world without God… so I began to seek the good, and if you seek the good you will always find God.”

In the 1990s he helped establish orphanages in China and safe houses for women fleeing forced abortion.

Today in China they have a “dying population” due to 40 years of the One Child Policy, he said, and the government is now encouraging people to have at least three children.

Dr Mosher estimates that the CCP has been responsible for close to 500 million deaths, including during famines and the Cultural Revolution, as well as 400 million babies aborted under the One-Child Policy.

“It’s hard to overstate the brutality of this regime which governs the Chinese people with a heavy hand… the first and foremost victims of the CCP are the Chinese people themselves.”

The CCP aims to “completely obliterate” the underground Catholic Church, he said, with the ultimate goal of “the total eradication” of Catholicism from China.

Having seen the depth of faith and commitment among China’s estimated 12 million Catholics, however, Dr Mosher said he was hopeful for the future of Catholicism in China.

“I think the future of Catholicism everywhere in the world is very bright, despite the persecution. I think saints are being made on a daily basis in China. I think martyrs are being made on a daily basis in China.

“I think that we win in the end.”