Latest batch of Chinese spies wear the collar of Catholic priest

[Budge]

[quote]Latest batch of Chinese spies wear the collar of Catholic priest

By Judi McLeod

Friday, August 4, 2006

Attache-carrying businessmen in pinstriped suits are ripping off North American enterprises by first stealing then carrying trade secrets back to the Peoples Republic of China.

The FBI believes that as many as 3,500 Chinese "front companies" are involved in espionage for the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

While North America is fighting Islamic terrorism, China will be America’s greatest counterintelligence problem during the next 10 to 15 years.

After the United States and Russia, the PRC can boast the world’s third-largest intelligence apparatus, still growing to spy on governmental, military and high technology secrets.

While intel agencies are on to industrial espionage conducted by Chinese agents, the latest batch of Chinese spies would give The Da Vinci Code a run for its money.
[b]
Not all Chinese spies look like the bustling Wall Street set. These days Chinese spies are wearing the collar of the humble parish priest.

[u]"China’s foreign intelligence service Guoanbu is taking advantage of the thaw with the Vatican to send government-approved Chinese priests abroad," reports the Paris-based Intelligence Online. "They are, in fact, intelligence operatives, as European counter-intelligence agencies have come to realize in recent months."[/u]

It all started with changes in the balance of power between the underground, unofficial Catholic Church and the official, communist-dominated Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association following recent talks between envoys from Rome to Beijing.

There should be broad hints for the Vatican in a Chinese counterintelligence that views unofficial Catholics as potential threats, similar to the Falun Gong sect.[/b]

"The government denounced the Vatican’s appointment of 40 bishops in the unofficial church in February." (World Tribune.com, July 31, 2006).

In China, the occult is in, Christianity is not. Indeed, scores of Catholic clergy have been beaten, imprisoned and murdered.

The official church in China is headed by Fu Tieshan and Liu Bainian, media-dubbed the "Red Pope".

Among other things, the Red Pope seems to suffer from delusions of grandeur.

"China’s socialist system comes from God. We should all protect it and obey it. This is what the Bible tells us to do," Liu announced in March 2006.

There can be little doubt that Liu, likely also believes that the Bible authorized Chinese authorities to remove organs from living victims, too.

The leader of China’s state-controlled Catholic church said he suspects the Vatican appointed an anti-Communist Hong Kong bishop to be cardinal because the Pope wanted to play a role in the Communist Party’s demise.

"Why would you appoint someone who doesn’t support communism as a cardinal?" Liu said in an interview in Beijing with Hong Kong Cable TV.

The Chinese Communist state, apparently still bristles at the memory of Pope John Paul 11 and his courageous fight against communism.

"Is isn't like Poland? Didn’t the church play a big role in Poland?" Liu asked.

Perhaps papal envoys Archbishop Claudio Celli, of the Vatican property office, who is in charge of relations with China and Monsignor Gianfranco Rota Graziosi, a senior aide in the Vatican state secretariat, should add spy alert to their envoy work.[/quote]

[url="http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/cover080406.htm"]LINK[/url]

[Mateo el Feo]

Here's an interesting book about a Chinese Jesuit who spent years in prison under the communists, because of his faith:
[url="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0829414584/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/002-9461022-7954404?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155"]Bamboo Swaying in the Wind: A Survivor's Story of Faith and Imprisonment in Communist China[/url] by Claudia Devaux, George Bernard Wong, SJ

[jswranch]

Uhh, isn't attempted communist infiltration of the holy orders old news (1930's plus)?

[Budge]

Not old news, sounds like they succeeded and it has kept going on...

This seems to be a worldwide phenomenon...

Gives Alberto Rivera more backup, I suppose in his claims of Vatican intrigue worldwide.

[quote] Tinker, tailor, soldier, priest

Jonathan Luxmoore

[size=5]
Last month a prominent Polish priest became the latest church figure to confess that he spied for the secret police during the Communist era.[/size]

"I wish to apologise to everyone, including my relatives, and ask forgiveness from those I harmed," Mgr Michal Czajkowski, the Church's representative on the Catholic Wiez monthly, told newspapers in a statement.

"My guilt is indisputable. I can't excuse this 24-year entanglement only by citing the nature of the times or my own naivety, fear and loose talk. I also showed a weakness of character."

Mgr Czajkowski's admission came soon after it was reported that another senior priest, a friend of John Paul II, had been a police informer. A new book, Spying on Wojtyla, details the bugs and cameras planted in the future pope's Krakow residence and the information supplied about his private life by informer-priests with codenames such as "Jurek" and "Trybun". An investigation is also under way into possible Polish involvement in the May 1981 attempt on the Pope's life in Rome. All of this has renewed interest in identifying clergy agents.

[size=5]In the late 1990s, stories abounded of priests who had informed for the regime while denouncing it from their pulpits, prompting calls for the full-scale screening, or lustration, of Catholic clergy. Yet while few question the Church's heroic role in defending human rights under Communist rule, the latest revelations have placed the historical record in a more realistic, less iconic light.[/size]

In a late June statement, the Polish Bishops' Conference said it would oppose any form of screening which drew only on files from the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or SB, Poland's secret police. "These documents were prepared by secret services hostile to the Church," the bishops noted. "There can be no proper lustration without first uncovering the SB's structures and methods of activity."

Under a 1997 law, MPs, judges and other civic officials are required to state whether they "consciously and secretly collaborated" with the SB, at the risk of being labelled "lustration liars".But Church personnel are not covered by the measure, and the judicial and administrative procedures remain ill-defined, making it easier to impugn than to exonerate. Some Catholics think that if priests collaborated and informed, they should confess and apologise. Until that happens, they argue, there can be no understanding and forgiveness.

During his late-May pilgrimage to Poland, Pope Benedict came to the defence of accused clergy, insisting the confessio peccati - a public admission of guilt - should be accompanied by a confessio laudis which acknowledged the Church's past achievements. "We believe the Church is holy, but that there are sinners among her members," he told clergy in Warsaw's St John's Cathedral on 25 May. "Humble sincerity is needed not to deny the sins of the past, and at the same time not to indulge in facile accusations in the absence of real evidence or without regard for the different preconceptions of the time."

A day after the Pope's departure, however, another senior priest, Mgr Mieczyslaw Malinski, was named as an informer by Poland's Catholic Tygodnik Powszechny weekly. Mgr Malinski, a friend of John Paul II from seminary days, admitted contacts with the SB, but denied being an agent. However, editors of the newspaper, whose Krakow staff was heavily infiltrated, said they had known for a long time about "Delta", the 83-year-old priest's codename.

Krakow's archdiocesan curia condemned the reports and accused the media of "undermining love for the Church and Christ". And when Fr Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, a much-harassed former Solidarity chaplain at the nearby Nowa Huta steelworks, promised to publish the names of 28 more clergy who had informed on John Paul II, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz stepped in.

"Throwing accusations at particular people after just a superficial examination of the material is highly irresponsible and harmful," the cardinal, who was John Paul II's personal secretary until his death in April 2005, told the priest in a published letter. "I have not authorised you to deal with this matter. Instead, I have made it a task for competent people with historical knowledge and experience, who will guarantee a neutral examination of this delicate material."

In a Corpus Christi sermon, Cardinal Dziwisz apologised to Poles who felt "hurt by clergy collaborators", urging Catholics not to "lose trust in the Church" over the issue. However, when his own commission presented its report in June, there were no names and facts - only a series of reflections "on the theological dimension of the problem".

Around one in 10 Catholic clergy is estimated by the country's National Remembrance Institute (IPN) to have acted as informers in Communist-ruled Poland, beginning in the 1950s when attempts were made to install pro-Communist "patriot priests" in top positions. However, virtually all were approached at one time or another, especially those with particular needs and vulnerabilities, with the highest recruitment rates recorded in the 1980s.

After 1989, Church hierarchies throughout Eastern Europe made efforts to vet their priests, retiring or downgrading those compromised by collaboration. But in Poland, the process was often piecemeal.

The end to Communist rule was negotiated at government-opposition talks, so there was no systematic clear-out of office holders such as occurred in Czechoslovakia or East Germany.Clergy collaboration seemed marginal beside the Church's role in helping restore democracy. Not surprisingly, Poland's Catholic bishops resisted calls for a public discussion.

In 2001, a former Interior Minister, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, confirmed in a newspaper letter that he had agreed to shred documents "presenting clergy in an unfavourable light" when Church-State relations were normalised. However, there were warnings that some priests could face blackmail by former SB agents.

Poland's Catholic primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, admitted some had shown a "far-reaching loyalty" to Communist power "for the sake of a quiet life or a few wretched coins". Yet although SB archives were collected and catalogued by the IPN after its creation in 1999, Church leaders appeared more interested in what they revealed about the glory of Catholic martyrdom than the shame of Catholic collaboration.

Evidence suggests the SB added the names of dissidents to their files to discredit them, and gave codenames to casual contacts who had merely been considered as potential recruits. But in early 2005, an enterprising journalist secretly copied the IPN's database and published the names of 240,000 alleged collaborators on the internet. The "Wildstein List" appeared without supporting documentation; and for a short time, names could be added or deleted by readers. Many of those included protested their innocence but found themselves ostracised by friends and colleagues. In at least one other case, the priest was supported by some colleagues but not by others. When Fr Konrad Hejmo was accused in April 2005 by the IPN of spying on John Paul II in Rome, his superior helped publicise the allegations, while fellow Dominicans came to his defence, accusing the IPN of acting as "judge, prosecutor and executioner".

Controversies about the role of priests in the Communist era are not confined to the Church in Poland. In May 2003, the Czech Bishops Conference rejected the resignation of its general secretary, Mgr Karel Simandl, after his name appeared among other priests on a list of 75,000 former Statni Bezpecnosti (StB) police informers. In March 2005, bishops in neighbouring Slovakia announced fresh plans to vet clergy after claims that former informers still held Church offices. In neighbouring Hungary, the Bishops' Conference asked forgiveness after a list of clergy-agents was published on the internet, including the Church's retired primate, Cardinal Laszlo Paskai.

The Polish Church has, however, been divided in its reactions. Four dioceses have set up commissions to investigate Communist-era infiltration, as have the Dominican order and Conference of Religious Superiors representing Poland's 23,000 Catholic nuns. But most have refused, pleading lack of time and resources. Some, like Archbishop Tadeusz Goclowski of Gdansk, have cited practical reasons. If it is to be fair, he argues, the lustration of priests should be handled by a neutral body rather than by the Church itself. Others, like Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl, the Bishops' Conference president, have objected that there are more pressing problems to attend to, such as mass unemployment and emigration, and that the current hunt for informers will merely "create new martyrs".

Yet many Poles believe church leaders are failing to confront reality in their determination to defend the Church's institutional interests. By opening the archives, they could show how the Church's own collaborators were victims of the system. They could also set an important example by facilitating a much-needed debate on the parameters of guilt and forgiveness, and by helping restore integrity and honesty to public affairs.[/quote]


[url="http://www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/8431/"]LINK[/url]

[Lounge Daddy]

interesting stuff, ain't it?
i have the book "spys in the vatican" on order... i am looking forward to reading it

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Budge' post='1041394' date='Aug 11 2006, 09:39 AM']
Not old news, sounds like they succeeded and it has kept going on...

This seems to be a worldwide phenomenon...

Gives Alberto Rivera more backup, I suppose in his claims of Vatican intrigue worldwide.
[url="http://www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/8431/"]LINK[/url]
[/quote]You do yourself no favors by attempting to bring [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Rivera"]Alberto Rivera [/url] into this thread.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Budge' post='1041019' date='Aug 10 2006, 01:06 PM']
The leader of China’s state-controlled Catholic church said he suspects the Vatican appointed an anti-Communist Hong Kong bishop to be cardinal because the Pope wanted to play a role in the Communist Party’s demise.

"Why would you appoint someone who doesn’t support communism as a cardinal?" Liu said in an interview in Beijing with Hong Kong Cable TV.

[b]The Chinese Communist state, apparently still bristles at the memory of Pope John Paul 11[sic] and his courageous fight against communism.[/b]

"Is isn't like Poland? Didn’t the church play a big role in Poland?" Liu asked.
[/quote]
Apparently you didn't read, or were hoping we wouldn't read, the parts of the article you haven't put in big text.

As stated in this article, the Catholic Church has always been a strong enemy of Communism.

And the very fact that the Communists hired spies to inflitrate the Catholic Church, in fact proves this point. One only spies on, or attempts to infiltrate, one's enemies. The Communists had spies infiltrating the U.S. government too. Did this mean the United States is a Communist nation?

If the Communists control, or are controlled by (or whatever your conspiracy-theory holds), the Catholic Church, why would they want to infiltrate it with spies? If the Catholic Church is Communist, the Communists would have no need to try to spy on the Church!

Budge, this is getting really pathetic. Having roundly failed to disprove the truth of the Catholic Church, you now resort to spinning crazy conspiracy theories and screaming, "The Catholics are Commies!"

Edited August 12, 2006 by Socrates

[Budge]

[url="http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006c/071406/071406h.php"]READ THIS[/url]

Heres more on Gorby for ya...

From Gorbys speech...

[url="http://www.earth-usa.org/news/news1.html"]GORBYS SPEECH[/url]



[quote]
[size=5]Pope John Paul II said something that I often quote. He said: "We need a new world, a global and interdependent world and a world order that should be more stable, more just". "More just". I emphasize this. [/size]Many politicians don’t like this word, particularly in developed nations but also a more humane world. Yes, I support this. This is what we need. And if this formula is implemented then we will find solutions for different countries. We will be able to unite the efforts of different countries.[/quote]

[quote]nd what kind of world government would that be? What sort of peace would we have? To use the words of Mikhail Gorbachev in his book Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (which he wrote exclusively for Western consumption) [size=5]"Upon the success of perestroika depends the future of socialism and the future of peace." (p. 44.) His idea of peace is intricately tied to socialism.
[/size]
Throughout this book, which he addresses to the United States, he states emphatically[b] that "every part of our program of perestroika -- and the program as a whole, for that matter -- is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy." (p. 23.) Gorbachev rejoices in the fact that "the initial phase of world socialism's rise and development is over," explaining that "the socialist system has firmly established itself in a large group of nations" (including the United States). [/b](p. 150.) He then states that we are now embarking on the next and final phase, which is to unite those countries into a "socialist community," to and finally establish "world socialism." (p. 151.) That is what perestroika is all about, and that is what Mikhail Gorbachev means by "New World Order."
[url="http://www.newswithviews.com/socialism/socialism5.htm"]LINK[/url][/quote]

[url="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20001104_jubil-parlgov_en.html"]POPE HONORS GORBACHEV[/url]

Edited August 12, 2006 by Budge

[Budge]

[quote]xcerpt from book by Fr. Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II): “In a well organized society, orientated to the common good, class conflicts are solved peacefully through reforms. But states that base their order on individualistic liberalism are not such societies[font="Arial Black"]. So when an exploited class fails to receive in a peaceful way the share of the common good to which it has a right, it has to follow a different path.”[/font] [emphasis added][/quote]

[url="http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006c/071406/071406h.php"]POPE JPII COMMUNIST SYMPATHIZER?[/url]
[quote]
Zycinski and his supporters will have trouble controlling public comment once Catholic Social Ethics is published. The bulk of the work is written as a response to Marxism. Wojtyla’s aim, he makes clear, isn’t to apply Marxism to Christianity, [font="Arial Black"]but to give Marxist concepts a Christian meaning, and win back the ideas of social justice that Marxism had expropriated[/font].[/quote]

[img]http://www.novusordowatch.org/archive_files/jp2_gorbachev.jpg[/img]

[quote]John Paul II sent a message to the congress, proposing the creation of a new worldwide social pact that would guarantee greater cooperation at all levels and not exclude the poor countries, as happens now.
[size=5]
"It is not enough to be limited to measures that redistribute produced wealth," the Pope explained, "rather it is necessary that in the production of goods itself there be room for greater solidarity.[/size]" He also emphasized the urgency to reaffirm the primacy of politics in the original and highest sense of the term. [/quote]

This is from ZENIT, Catholic site...

[url="http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:3hSI9np3iYMJ:www.zenit.org/english/archive/0011/ZE001130.html+Zenit+and+redistribute+the+wealth&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a"]POPE JPII SUPPORTED REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AMONG NATIONS[/url]

[Socrates]

Well, well, well, Budge. Nice little cut-and-paste job, taking things out of context, and making up misleading "titles." Don't know who you think will be fooled by this silliness. (If you actually read the article linked to, you'll see that the Pope was basically just saying that people in rich countries should do more to help people in poor countries. He was not advocating Communism.)

Here's some articles about Pope John Paul II's role in defeating Communism:

[url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28398-2005Apr5.html"]How the Pope Defeated Communism (washingtonpost.com)[/url]

[url="http://religion-cults.com/pope/communism.htm"]Pope John Paul II and Communism[/url]

[url="http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-4-2/27537.html"]Pope Championed Communism's Collapse, Mideast Peace[/url]

[url="http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9801/21/papal.politics/index.html"]Pope John Paul's crusade against communism[/url]

[url="http://lists.jammed.com/IWAR/1998/01/0101.html"][IWAR] CUBA Pope attacks communism[/url]

[url="http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050405/news_lz1e5kemp.html"]The pope and the fall of communism[/url]

[url="http://www.cathnews.com/news/105/57.php"]Lech Walesa credits Pope for communism's downfall [/url]

[url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/3007787.stm"]Pope's role in Communism's end [/url]

[url="http://www.catholicnews.com/jpii/stories/story06.htm"]History may see pope as godfather of communism's demise[/url]

[url="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3276657/"]John Paul II and communism[/url]

[url="http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-4-5/27615.html"]The Spirit Behind Liberating Eastern Europe from Communism[/url]

Enjoy!

[Socrates]

To find out what the Pope really taught about Communism, read [url="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html"]Pope John Paul II's Encyclical [i]Centesimus Annus[/i][/url], which clearly condemns Marxism, Communism, and socialism.

Some excerpts:
[quote]Therefore class struggle in the Marxist sense and militarism have the same root, namely, atheism and contempt for the human person, which place the principle of force above that of reason and law.

15. [i]Rerum novarum[/i] is opposed to State control of the means of production, which would reduce every citizen to being a "cog" in the State machine. It is no less forceful in criticizing a concept of the State which completely excludes the economic sector from the State's range of interest and action. There is certainly a legitimate sphere of autonomy in economic life which the State should not enter. The State, however, has the task of determining the juridical framework within which economic affairs are to be conducted, and thus of safeguarding the prerequisites of a free economy, which presumes a certain equality between the parties, such that one party would not be so powerful as practically to reduce the other to subservience.[/quote]

[quote]30. In [i]Rerum novarum[/i], Leo XIII strongly affirmed the natural character of the right to private property, using various arguments against the socialism of his time.65 This right, which is fundamental for the autonomy and development of the person, has always been defended by the Church up to our own day. [/quote]

[quote]The Successors of Leo XIII have repeated this twofold affirmation: the necessity and therefore the legitimacy of private ownership, as well as the limits which are imposed on it.67 The Second Vatican Council likewise clearly restated the traditional doctrine in words which bear repeating: "In making use of the exterior things we lawfully possess, we ought to regard them not just as our own but also as common, in the sense that they can profit not only the owners but others too"; and a little later we read: "Private property or some ownership of external goods affords each person the scope needed for personal and family autonomy, and should be regarded as an extension of human freedom ... Of its nature private property also has a social function which is based on the law of the common purpose of goods".68 I have returned to this same doctrine, first in my address to the Third Conference of the Latin American Bishops at Puebla, and later in the Encyclicals Laborem exercens and Sollicitudo rei socialis.69[/quote]


[quote]In modern times, this concept has been opposed by totalitarianism, which, in its Marxist-Leninist form, maintains that some people, by virtue of a deeper knowledge of the laws of the development of society, or through membership of a particular class or through contact with the deeper sources of the collective consciousness, are exempt from error and can therefore arrogate to themselves the exercise of absolute power. It must be added that totalitarianism arises out of a denial of truth in the objective sense. If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people. Their self-interest as a class, group or nation would inevitably set them in opposition to one another. If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to impose his own interests or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of others. People are then respected only to the extent that they can be exploited for selfish ends. Thus, the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by his very nature the subject of rights which no one may violate — no individual, group, class, nation or State. Not even the majority of a social body may violate these rights, by going against the minority, by isolating, oppressing, or exploiting it, or by attempting to annihilate it.91

45. The culture and praxis of totalitarianism also involve a rejection of the Church. The State or the party which claims to be able to lead history towards perfect goodness, and which sets itself above all values, cannot tolerate the affirmation of an objective criterion of good and evil beyond the will of those in power, since such a criterion, in given circumstances, could be used to judge their actions. This explains why totalitarianism attempts to destroy the Church, or at least to reduce her to submission, making her an instrument of its own ideological apparatus.92

Furthermore, the totalitarian State tends to absorb within itself the nation, society, the family, religious groups and individuals themselves. In defending her own freedom, the Church is also defending the human person, who must obey God rather than men (cf. Acts 5:29), as well as defending the family, the various social organizations and nations — all of which enjoy their own spheres of autonomy and sovereignty.[/quote]

The Pope even condemns "welfare state" socialism!
[quote]In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called "Welfare State". This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the "Social Assistance State". Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.100

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need. One thinks of the condition of refugees, immigrants, the elderly, the sick, and all those in circumstances which call for assistance, such as drug abusers: all these people can be helped effectively only by those who offer them genuine fraternal support, in addition to the necessary care.[/quote]

Edited August 13, 2006 by Socrates