Image: Gcmarino, Sanchezsorondowikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
By Riccardo Cascioli
“At this moment, the Chinese are the ones who are best achieving the social doctrine of the Church.” This quote alone, given at the beginning of an interview on China published by Vatican Insider (Spanish edition), should be enough to provoke the immediate dismissal of Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences and Social Sciences. Apart from being an insult to common sense, such an affirmation represents an explosive blend of: abysmal ignorance (both of the social doctrine of the Church as well as of the situation in China), ideological addiction, and contempt for Chinese Christians, who even now are undergoing a terrible persecution.
It is a mix which impiously reveals the total inadequacy of the Argentine prelate to hold such a sensitive role in the Vatican. Even more so because after that initial affirmation, Sorondo continued with a series of idiotic statements describing the People’s Republic of China as a sort of paradise on earth, a bit like the way the old Italian Communists thought of the Soviet Union of Stalin. Respect for the environment, the priority of having work for all, there are no slums, no drugs, and so on in his delirium.
But what is even more incredible is that to defend his thesis that the Chinese regime is promoting the common good, Sorondo cites the economist Stefano Zamagni saying he had personally “assured” him. Whereas we have to reach Zamagni by telephone, obviously [for Sorondo] Professor Zamagni just falls from the clouds and – besides referring to his books and public interventions to know his thought – points out that “we can speak of the common good only from within the Christian tradition.” It can be said of China that in recent years it has promoted political measure to “reduce economic inqualities,” but to speak of the common good is simply ridiculous; Zamagni warns against looking only at the increase of the GDP without also considering other social indicators which paint a much less idyllic picture of China.
However we are almost certain that once again nothing will happen. Because, and we are keen to emphasize this, Sorondo’s statement on China is not a simple little gaffe, however absurd, of a nicely-robed Vatican official who is in the end harmless. If this were so we would shake it off with a laugh. No, the situation here is much more serious. His absurd statements on China are actually part of a greater context of the surrender of the Holy See to the Beijing regime, which is being spun in the Vatican in an irrationally optimistic way. Therefore the interview of Sorondo, who represented the Holy See in China at an international conference on organ transplants, reveals an attitude toward China [within the Vatican] which goes far beyond his personal preferences.
In the last few years Bishop Sorondo, with his Academies, has become the point of reference for the “humanitarianist” shift of the Holy See which, for example, has permitted the infiltration of the Vatican by the most well-known proponents of the birth control movement. It is no coincidence that significant openings to the possibility of contraception have begun. To say nothing of the attempt to pass off a scientific hypothesis – of catastrophic global warming caused by human activity – as authentic magisterium. And things have developed to such an extent that recently Bishop Sorondo was able to calmly affirm that “we are living a magic moment because, for the first time, the discourse of the Church and the discourse of world represented by the United Nations go together.” Truly a magic moment, as magical as the situation in China.
But this is precisely what is at stake: the ratification of the thought of the world by the Catholic Church. And in this Sorondo is only a pawn.
Originally published at La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana
Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino
