Bishop Wang in Beijing
Being principal celebrant at a recent Mass at Beijing’s Divine Savior Church represented personal and pastoral milestones for San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius Wang, and also signaled growing mutual accord between the Catholic Church of Rome and the Chinese government.
Also known as North Church, Divine Savior is where the bishop received three sacraments as a youth – baptism, first Eucharist and confirmation. He lived with his family “just around the corner” from the church, he said.
The invitation to be principal celebrant at the parish’s main Sunday liturgy also held noteworthy symbolic significance, the bishop told Catholic San Francisco. While he has visited the church several times in recent years, this is the first time he was asked to celebrate Mass, something that would have been unheard of in the recent past, he said.
Bishop Wang said he was “amazed” not only that the pastor invited him to concelebrate, but that no official permission was sought from officials of the Catholic Patriotic Association, which functions as the liaison between Catholic churches registered with the Chinese government and its State Administration for Religious Affairs.
“It was audacious,” the bishop said.
While tension between the Vatican and the Chinese government over control of Church properties, appointments and ministry continues, Bishop Wang said, it seems both Rome and Beijing are increasingly comfortable with one another even as “the diplomatic dancing” continues.
The Chinese government, for example, did not allow bishops from China to take part in the Bishops Synod on the Bible at the Vatican during October. On the other hand, a large banner proclaiming the Catholic Patriotic Association that was prominently displayed on the exterior of Divine Savior Church has been removed, something Bishop Wang said is “very symbolic.”
The Church and China “both take the long view,” Bishop Wang said, “and both are very patient.”
While discord between the Vatican and the Chinese government might be subsiding, friction between the members of the underground Catholic Church in China and the officially recognized Church remain, Bishop Wang said.
Members of the underground Church, he said, often see themselves as moral loyal to the Church and are resistant to reconciling with what is now seen as the mainstream Church.
Bishop Wang said news of his pending participation at the Sept. 14 North Church Mass “spread by word of mouth” and that by the time the liturgy began the church “barely had standing room.”
“The fact that a bishop recognized by Rome was going to be celebrating Mass is a big deal,” the bishop said, adding that he was “mobbed” after the Mass and spent nearly an hour responding to requests for blessings, conversation and to touch his episcopal ring.
“It was very moving,” he said.
While he did not deliver the homily at the Sept. 14 Mass, Bishop Wang said he “was asked to say a few words” before it began.
He shared a story of his first Communion, he said, drawing laughter when he told parishioners that he had informed his family he did not think he was ready to receive the sacrament but that his grandmother told him “if the priest says you are ready, you are ready,” and she took him back to the church the next day. At that time women and men sat in their own sections of the church and so the seven-year-old had to sit with his grandmother in the women’s pews.
Bishop Wang said he was impressed with the gradual restoration of the church which was “used as a dump” and “piled full of garbage” in the 1980s. While Immaculate Conception Cathedral, known as South Church, is currently the cathedral parish in Beijing, that designation might eventually return to Divine Savior, he said.
The native of Beijing became the first person of Asian descent to be ordained a bishop for the United States on Jan. 30, 2003. He will celebrate his golden jubilee of priestly ordination on July 4, 2009.
(By Dan Morris-Young)
