"Communism is Dead" Update

Catholic Bishop in Red Chinese Prison

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        As I have noted before in this column, Vladimir Lenin coined the term "useful idiots" for those Western commentators who provided cover for communist atrocities in the press and elsewhere, assuring the West that communism was nothing to be feared.

       The Catholic Church has its own useful idiots, who ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’ over the "fall of communism" since the "consecration of Russia" in 1984 — you know, that ceremony in which everything but Russia was mentioned. Meanwhile, Vladimr Putin has erected a neo-Stalinist dictatorship in Russia that persecutes the Catholic Church, while the Red Chinese regime in Beijing not only persecutes the Church but imprisons Her clergy.

       As AsiaNews reported on May 10, 2005, "Four years ago, 83-year-old Mgr. Shi Enxiang, a Bishop in the Chinese underground Church, disappeared and the authorities deny knowing anything about his fate." That, of course, is lie. The communists imprisoned Bishop Enxiang. As AsiaNews reports:

       "[T]he Chinese underground Church has decided to make public the detention of the 83-year-old prelate from Yixian (Hebei province) whose actual existence was hitherto unknown. This explains why his name was not on the list of bishops and priests jailed by the Chinese government that AsiaNews published in March and why underground Church sources have asked that information about Bishop Shi’s disappearance be made public."

       The "underground" Church is the true Catholic Church in China, as opposed to the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), created by Mao Tse Tung to replace the Chinese Catholic hierarchy with handpicked communist stooges.

       AsiaNews also reports that Bishop Shi Enxiang has been in jail since his "disappearance" on April 13, 2001 "from his niece’s home in Beijing." Eyewitnesses saw "two cars bearing licence plates from Xushui (Hebei province) drive the bishop away…. After four years in jail, nothing is known about the Bishop’s incarceration with the authorities still refusing to acknowledge knowing anything about it."

        Lies and more lies by agents of the father of lies. That is the case in China, and it is also the case in "converted" Russia, where the Catholic Church is barely allowed to exist and is a few votes in the Russia Dumas away from outright legal extinction.

        This, the useful idiots tell us, is the "fall of communism" and the "conversion of Russia." One wonders how much more human suffering and persecution of the Mystical Body of Christ the useful idiots will ignore, before they finally admit they have covered up the truth that could have prevented it all.