China has pressed its case for the local appointment of bishops, with an article in the government-controlled People Daily arguing that the Vatican’s claim to authority is “the West’s historical baggage and frankly its problem.”
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The Pope is not only a spiritual leader, but also the head of an independent state, the Chinese paper observes. “Europeans may choose to see this as quaint, but China is questioning the principle of letting a foreign state dictate to another what happens on its own territory.”
People Daily dismisses the Vatican’s excommunication of bishops who were installed without a mandate from the Holy See. Excommunication, the article asserts, is “a medieval tool that has no place in 2011 in China or anywhere.”
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