Sensational report from China: a new split in the Church?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 28, 2026

A report about “terrible things happening to Catholics in China” should surprise no one who has been following events there for the past ten years—or, for that matter, for the past seventy years. But the details that follow, in bombshell story in Catholic World Report are sensational.

Anthony Clark, an expert on Chinese Catholic affairs, recounts his conversation with a Chinese bishop, whose name Clark does not expose. The bishop is “unaffiliated with the Patriotic Association,” Clark tells us. In other words he is a leader of the “underground” Catholic Church, and if he were identified he would immediately become a target for government prosecutors (if he is not in their sights already). This bishop says that the Church in China is now experiencing “a state of emergency.”

Does that phrase sound familiar?

The anonymous bishop goes on to say that in the Fujian province, the government’s aggressive campaign to control the Church threatens the integrity of the faith.

To “assure the survival of China’s Church,” new bishops have been “secretly consecrated.” The number is unknown, but he suggested that “at least ten new bishops” were ordained for the underground community there.

Maybe this bishop is exaggerating. Maybe he is misinformed, or delusional. Maybe the reporter, the ordinarily reliable Clark, has been hoodwinked. But if the report is even roughly accurate, the implications are momentous.

First, the secret ordination of ten or more bishops would show conclusively that the Vatican’s secret deal with Beijing is a failure. The purpose of that agreement, as explained by the Vatican Secretariat of State, was to ensure that the Church in China was unified, and all of China’s diocesan bishops would be recognized by both the government and the Holy See. If the “underground” Church is ordaining its own bishops, the split within Chinese Catholicism remains severe. And if those secret episcopal ordinations are occurring more frequently than the “official” ordinations authorized through the mysterious and awkward provisions of the Beijing-Vatican accord, then that agreement is a farce.

But the dissatisfaction of some Chinese Catholics with the Vatican’s approach is, again, not news. Clark reminds us, in his Catholic World Report article, “The faithful in China also question Rome’s genuine concern for their spiritual well-being when the Holy See approves of government-selected bishops who are suspiciously reliable to the state.”

The more important question raised by the bishop’s claim is whether the Vatican approves of those secret ordinations. (It goes without saying that Beijing does not approve.) If the Vatican does give its tactic approval, by doing so it acknowledges the failure of the agreement with the government. If the Vatican does not approve, the ordinations by the “underground” Church are illicit, and the situation in China appears comparable to that of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).

The two cases are far from identical. The “underground” Church in China has not questioned the orthodoxy of Vatican II teachings, or objected to doctrinal statements from the papal magisterium. On the contrary, the “underground” Chinese Catholics embrace the teachings of the Church, and wish only to be allowed to proclaim them without interference, without paying homage to the Communist regime.

Nevertheless, the canonical crimes attributed to the SSPX are ordaining bishops without a papal mandate and schism. If the “underground” prelates have been ordained without Rome’s approval, they and the bishops who ordained them are subject to automatic excommunication under the clear terms of the Code of Canon Law. If they are setting up an independent hierarchical structure, separate from one recognized by the Vatican, they are fulfilling the ordinary definition of schism.

Before the Vatican acceded to the secret deal with Beijing, loyal Chinese Catholics argued forcefully that the “official” Church, recognized by the government, and the Patriotic Association—whose powerful role Pope Benedict XVI denounced as incompatible with Catholic teaching—should be recognized as the source of division within the Church. Those some loyal Catholics observed quite accurately that many bishops of the “official” Church, who had been ordained without Vatican approval, were liable to excommunication. It would be a brutal irony if now the underground Catholics, who have suffered for years because of their determination to remain loyal to Rome, now found themselves accused of separating themselves from the universal Church.