AT BAYONET POINT: Facing down the Communists in China
Pendergast, Mary Carita
Long before I became a Catholic, my Jesuit-educated husband, born into and faithful to the church, told me that if I ever entered it, I wouldn't be eligible for confession. He explained that...
...As for the Christians, they are still at the foot of the cross where we led them, for the persecution and harassment continue...
...In my congregation there is a man who left his position as an active priest in the wake of Paul VI's Humanae vitae...
...The weather was very hot, and we plodded painfully toward the border of British-held Hong Kong...
...For the almost thirty years of my marriage, I've been a Catholic fellow-traveler, but it was only this past Easter that I was baptized...
...In the deep darkness of the Yuan River we were aware of other sampans near us filled with noisy passengers, and we prepared for trouble...
...I'm a eucharistic minister), and I was married in a Catholic ceremony, so I've got four sacraments down...
...Then they locked the doors of our free dispensary, and forbade mission personnel to enter our hundred-bed hospital and training school for nurses...
...The Communists' occupation had begun eighteen months earlier...
...You can imagine the humor and the crowding in this situation...
...Neither did the rest of us ever harm the people...
...Then, as James O'Toole writes, the system collapsed...
...There were several of these tragicomic happenings until we reached the railway station at Changsha...
...Holy orders are out as far as I'm concerned, and so far I haven't needed the sacrament of the sick...
...I continue to receive Communion (and give it...
...Priestly absolution would follow only on inquiring whether such a confession was properly understood and made, and ascertaining the penitenf s sorrow...
...When we reached Canton, all the foreigners were ordered to stand in a row at the siding...
...I argued, "Come on, Loretta...
...The Eucharist might be exalted as a miraculous source of sanctifying grace but it was confession that got one over the threshold, so to speak—that could make the difference between eternal happiness or torture...
...What collapsed, of course, was not simply a particular practice but a whole web of beliefs and attitudes—about sin, damnation, and hell, about fear, shame, guilt, and the ultimate ecclesiastical control exercised by the power of absolution...
...Might not the church, building on certain precedents, retain the necessity of personal confession but, if so desired, allow it to be made not to a priest but another Christian, a spouse, friend, or adviser...
...Still others, especially at the highest levels of church leadership, issue heartfelt and poignant appeals for a return to the sacrament, appeals that enjoy just enough success in pockets here and there to encourage a strategy of sheer repetition...
...On different planets Luke Timothy Johnson's critique of Pope John Paul II's reflections on sexuality was the most theologically cogent and pastorally persuasive commentary I've read in years about Catholic sexual teaching...
...No red hat Luke Timothy Johnson's incisive critique of John Paul II's pronouncements on love, sex, and pleasure should be studied and openly discussed in every Catholi college and Newman Club in the nation—together with Paul Baumann's humorous reflections on George Weigel's biography of our pope ("Crossing the Threshold," December 3, 1999...
...When we disembarked, we were immediately surrounded by women soldiers who subjected us to a thorough and embarrassing search, and then led us to a double line of our own high school girls armed with sticks...
...Numerous strands in that web have become for many Catholics utterly untenable, as unacceptable, even reprehensible, on moral grounds as belief in a seven-day creation is on scientific grounds...
...Mary Carita Pendergast, S.C., served in China for eighteen years...
...One wonders in what spatial reality their authors live...
...Standing nearby, there was a woman eyeing me sympathetically, nodding in denial of the current goings-on...
...But the Passionists with whom we had collaborated for so many years and the native Christians were subject to much crueler treatment than had been accorded us...
...MOST REV...
...We foreigners were then directed to a hotel just across from the train station, and Monsignor Dillon found himself in a room adjoining that of the other priests...
...The documents issuing from Rome and diocesan offices come across as totally abstract and divorced from real life...
...Shortly afterward, they returned without their captive...
...Their abstention was so swift, massive, and spontaneous that it apparently stunned most commentators into silence...
...Have they ever had any firsthand, practical experience with marriage...
...He was the American Franciscan prefect apostolic of Shashih, in Hunan, who had spent eighty-five days in prison and had left behind several of his confreres in the same prison...
...Keep 13 For centuries, confession or penance (as it was alternatively called) was the linchpin of the Catholic sacramental economy...
...We were not surprised to find that we were denied soft seats for the long, overnight ride to Canton...
...the takeover was gradual and well-planned...
...The rejection has been even more drastic and far-reaching than O'Toole has space to suggest...
...The bishop had chartered sampans, and several priests accompanied us...
...She later earned a doctorate in psychology from Fordham University, and was the vicar for religious in the Trenton Diocese...
...Their first action was directed toward our schools for girls, two elementary schools, and a middle and high school...
...But we were put off the train at Lo-Wu, a neutral strip of land one mile wide which had been denuded of trees by the Chinese Communist government to prevent fugitives from hiding...
...Finally, the Communists turned their attention to the country mission at Wuki where the sisters conducted an orphanage, a school for girls, and a dispensary...
...I must admit, sadly, that in my thirty-six years as a priest, most married persons—and those to be married—with whom I have spoken feel that the church doesn't really address the complex problems couples face today...
...The two guards escorting monsignor out of China hurried past us...
...at worst, they too get caught in the tow of pop confessionalism and easy forgiveness, mainly of the self...
...Rather, it is about the church learning from the lived wisdom of her members and having the courage to (here is that word...
...The next morning we were again lined up in the railway station, until Monsignor Dillon was led past us and thrust into the baggage car...
...REV...
...Our community had served the poor of the Yuanling Diocese for twenty-seven years...
...Eight of us made it without hurt, for the girls would not raise their sticks...
...Abandoning the confessional was on no one's agenda at Vatican n. Catholics just voted with their feet...
...O'Toole is right to speak of a "gap...
...Among them was Father Anthony Maloney, a Passionist who came toward us with a welcoming smile and bottles of Coca-Cola...
...He nodded and smiled...
...all were subject, without exception, to a humiliating search...
...Vail, Colo...
...We were ordered to run through this gauntlet and at the end to kneel and to apologize to the Chinese people for our offenses against them...
...This we witnessed before entering the bureau, where further rough treatment awaited us...
...It is true mat frequent confession was hardly ever the norm throughout church history...
...To be sure, Luke Timothy Johnson will not be joining Avery Dulles at the next consistory...
...A European priest whispered, "A White Russian...
...There we stood huddled together amid a jeering crowd in a remote bus station of Hunan...
...I was confirmed then, too, and received Communion...
...We were leaving a Chinese novice, who would die thirty years later in a prison labor camp, and the graves of three American and two Chinese sisters...
...16 (Continued from page 4) Lived wisdom Luke Timothy Johnson's persuasive article on John Paul II's theology of the body is perhaps the finest article of its kind I have read in forty years...
...But nothing will revive the sacrament if we dismiss as simply superficial or misguided the intuitions that made Catholics shun it, or if we are unwilling to consider major modifications in the way it is celebrated...
...The end was in sight...
...Both of these Commonweal articles are priceless and full of wisdom from men who have actually "been there and done that...
...On the morning of our departure, we attended Mass at 4 a.m., had breakfast with the assembled community of Passionist priests, said our farewells, and left...
...The next morning, we were ordered to report to the Alien Registration Bureau, but our progress was halted for more than an hour by a demonstration against foreigners, during which Maryknoll Bishop Francis X. Ford, who later died in prison, and his secretary, Sister Joan, were paraded in a truck to the jeers of the bystanders...
...ANDREW GALLIGAN Tracy, Calif...
...three were held in house arrest in Yuanling for three years...
...The entire issue of human sexuality and the gospel tradition is, it seems to me, not so much a matter of church versus individual conscience...
...Many aware of that history have been tempted to shrug off the recent boycott as simply one more mutation that will, somehow, turn out for the best...
...We had been handed exit visas five days earlier, with orders to leave with only a hand valise of baggage, and to provide our own transportation from Yuanling to Hong Kong...
...peter steinfels 14 AT BAYONET POINT China, Holy Week, 1951 Nary Carita Pendergast erhaps it was fitting that our eviction from China took place during Holy Week, 1951...
...Then she noticed some soldiers watching her, and she raised a clenched fist and shook it in my face...
...Then the doors of the freight car opened, and two heavily armed soldiers jumped down and pulled down a small, thin white man, with long hair and unruly beard, trousers held up with a rope, and broken shoes...
...It's exciting to read something like Johnson's refreshing insights...
...I haven't been...
...Most of them have long ago put aside church teaching on birth control...
...That night, a Chinese woman ran screaming through the hotel corridors claiming that foreign priests (all securely locked in their rooms with their soldier guards) had raped her...
...The future of this sacrament, in short, depends on whether Catholics, from I'm-OK-you're-OK congregants in the pew to the authorities in Rome, are willing to undertake a real examination of conscience...
...At best, middleclass Catholics rely on a medicine chest of therapies to cope with inner scars, everyday conflicts, and chronic failings...
...There we found that there were no longer first-class and second-class compartments, but hardseat and soft-seat compartments...
...The debate over genera] absolution versus particular confession is a sideshow...
...Oh well...
...E. BRIAN CARSTEN Angola, Ind...
...They are worse off than we are...
...That leaves confession...
...Her Irish blue eyes blazed with indignation and she exclaimed, 15 "I crossed two oceans to serve these people...
...He was scruffy as the day before, but definitely cheerful as he flashed us a wide grin...
...Finally, she too went safely through the gauntlet...
...Is anybody listening to them...
...Next, they compelled the sisters to leave their convent and forbade the townspeople to lease us property...
...She thought she was being singled out as our leader...
...He explained that I was scrupulous—I imagined that I had sinned when I had not—and that therefore pastoral counseling was the thing for me...
...She is the author o/Havoc in Hunan: The Sisters of Charity in Western Hunan, 1924-51 (College of Saint Elizabeth Press...
...We were five priests, nine Sisters of Charity, six Protestant missionaries, and two French consulate wives with their children...
...That may be a weak example, meant only to raise the question whether the future of this sacrament depends on retaining a clerical power that is already lost in practice or on something more basic to the Christian life...
...24...
...But, alas, people like him who try to introduce fresh ways of looking at such questions, while preserving the deep values of our faith, often find the welcome mat snatched out from under 23 them...
...The two sisters there were ordered to Yuanling, forced to make a tour of government offices in the biting cold, and then told to go to the bishop's already overcrowded premises...
...two were sent to Changsha, where they were incarcerated for nearly four years...
...There is little of genuine moral scrutiny, repentance, the opening of the heart to God's grace...
...I hastened to where she stood and whispered, "Run the gauntlet and at the end apologize for your errors with the Chinese...
...Emboldened by our proximity to freedom, I said to the soldier hurrying back to Lo-Wu, "How is your prisoner...
...Sister Loretta was our superior, and in her misery and anxiety hadn't seen what was happening to the rest of us...
...Of course, both will be decried by those who believe Catholics should all walk in lock step with any current papal teaching, especially in matters of sexual ethics...
...Even the penitential service at Mass, typically rushed and more reassuring than challenging, seldom escapes the cultural norm and threatens to be embarrassing on the rare occasions when it does...
...I don't know what I'd say, exactly...
...Others have put their hopes on changing the label, redesigning the furniture, inviting a bigger crowd, altering the mood, and, cautiously, the theology—all to the better, no doubt, but with only marginal effects on Catholics' stubborn indifference...
...Maybe that's why there is such massive apostacy among young people of marrying age, as well as so many who are married...
...Without missing a step, the soldier muttered, "He is a good man...
...Each time we gather at the Lord's table, I see in his eyes, lo these many years later, the struggling wisdom that is so evident in Johnson's words...
...But the ragged little man glanced at the sisters in surprise out of bright blue eyes, and the word passed among the sisters, "Monsignor Dillon...
...Though I'm much older and calmer than I was when my husband made his serious joke about pastoral counseling, part of the reason I haven't confessed is connected with his analysis...
...So do we simply accept the reduction of seven sacraments to six...
...A few days later, all the priests and sisters were marched to the yamen while the Christians didn't dare salute them or look at them...
...Our last view of Bishop O'Gara was of him standing on the beach, holding a lighted lantern, sheltered from the heavy rain by a huge paper umbrella raised over him by an aged Christian woman...
...GEORGE R. FITZGERALD, C.S.P...
...We had only to rest and spruce up before continuing our journey by ship and rail, as was the travel mode a half-century ago...
...They held a series of compulsory meetings, and warned the people against attending church services and the catechumenate...
...That was nearly fifty years ago, and the event is still indelibly etched on my memory...
...At Hengyang, the station was crowded with recently arrived Russian soldiers, who peered in at us through the windows as curiously as we glanced out at them...
...Questions about the church's attitude toward the body and the indignities of sexual disclosures to a stranger claiming authority should not be exempt from that discussion...
...We were nine Sisters of Charity garbed in shabby habits, ranging in age from thirty-two to sixty-nine...
...The ride to Hong Kong was just a matter of three hours...
...I never harmed anyone...
...incorporate it...
...But we have all run safely through the gauntlet, and apologized, for we certainly did make some mistakes...
...and Bishop CGara was carried out of prison in a dying condition and spent a long period recovering in a Hong Kong hospital...
...The writer is Metropolitan Archbishop of the Orthodox Catholic Church of America...
...All four are now marked by time, but they remember with awe the valor of their associates, and with even greater awe the memory of the heroic Chinese Christians...
...Our ordeal was over...
...They eventually carried on a conversation in Latin over the six-foot-high room dividers as the guards nodded in sleep...
...sometimes I find it hard to separate the psychological from the spiritual...
...How long can we afford to lose this critically important segment of the Catholic church in favor of a moral theology of sexuality that appears so rigid and static...
...We had to turn to Bishop Cuthbert O'Gara for shelter in his rectory...
...At that point, a soldier whispered to me, "Tell Sister Halligan to run the gauntlet, or she will be severely punished...
...Seven Passionists were held in solitary confinement and received barbarous treatment in the prison at Yuanling...
...Of the eighteen Sisters of Charity and more than thirty Passionists who served the Yuanling mission, only two priests and two sisters survive...
...Missionaries of many nationalities had set up a watch at the border to welcome and direct refugees...
...When our Catholic principal refused to testify against us, they jailed her (she suffered eighteen years of imprisonment) and installed a Communist in her stead...
...The last of our party was Sister Loretta Halligan, who refused to enter the double line...
...indeed, the whole form and function of what is now called the sacrament of reconciliation underwent enormous changes over time...
Vol. 128 • February 2001 • No. 4
