Chinese Catholics under Pressure;

In an article at Sandro Magister's website we get the sad news of the continuing struggles and sufferings of the Catholic Church in China. It reminds me of the story of the conflicts in the early Church when the state actively intervened, sometimes on the side of orthodoxy but often against it, and many bishops vacillated in their loyalty and orthodoxy. At that time great theologian-bishops like Gregory Nazianzen and Basil of Caesarea stood up for the truth. In our own day many heresies threaten the Church; liturgical heresies, that the worship of God ought to be community-centred or ecclesial heresies that the Church is an entirely or largely a human construct and not of Divine origin or that she should shape herself to the ideologies of modern society. At root all these heresies are a rejection of the God who makes covenants with His people, who enters history in His Son and redeems man raising Him up an uniting him with the Divine Nature in the fullness of the Trinity. Let us pray with the Pope for the ship of Peter and for Peter's successor that he will not fail but will strengthen his brother bishops and all the faithful to resist the lies and assaults of the enemy.