China raises pressure on underground Catholics to join official church, Human Rights Watch finds

Underground churches are mostly cults. Even, if they claim they are part of Catholic church, what is the proof they aren't cults of their local leaders. It is pretty easy for any religious leader to take power using name of religious leader than is more recognizable. Having taken control of Buddhism, why should China not do that with churches. Given, Americian politics with involvement of pastors and church leaders, removal of foreign control on churches has to be key point against interference. The conservative movement is using churches and other religious bodies for expansion, destroying civil liberty and basic rights of individuals, and creating conflicts in countries.

Christians are a back door for imperialism. It’s not a coincidence American Christians are support Israel unconditionally and undermine state interests in favour of it.

China is an authoritarian regime that doesn't allow dissent. Xi just spent 2025 eliminating potential threats to his rule and coalescing his power.  I would be more surprised if they allowed more freedom, rather this crackdown is just par for the course.

> Also, I think you'll find that religious institutions can be tools of liberation (USA, South Korea, Poland) as well as colonization. Using USA as an example, when churches in USA became independent of the Church of England. You don't need your countries churches to have Pope or leader of Mormon or any other church that is in another country. > The government shouldn't get to decide which ideas are safe and which are foreign interference, because it just leads to giving them power to silence all dissent. It's fundamentally wrong to call anyone not part of government organizations a traitorous foreign actor. It is fine for politicians to go hand in hand to loot the public and for churches to go hand in hand with billionaires to create propaganda for capitalism. > As always, the best way to combat propaganda is not censorship, it's transparency and education. Government suppression doesn't work, it just creates radicals and actual threats. China especially should have learned from this. Lesson for China has been that as long as your grow and people's lives get better they don't care about censorship. If you look for all the religious leaders and sect, underground religions are generally far more abusive and suppressive than even communist govts like China. They engage sexual abuse to financial abuse. They are mostly cults.

Having a foreign religious institution controling your country, forcefully collecting 10% tax from citizens are real bad. The pope in Rome had in manny ways more power than the Danish king. The 30 year war was partly about this, and after the reformation the church was brought under control of the king, and later the parliament. The priests salary are paid by the government, and they are trained on state universities in different religions. A prist in Denmark is basically a civil servant, and he does not have to believe good. As long as he is following the book on how to conduct the ceremonies everything is ok. The problem is that the Muslim imams are not a part of this as they should to prevent extremism and control from e.g. the Saudi.

Churches are independent social pillars, not arms of the state. In fact, *not being a tool of any country* is part of the Catholic religion. 

Its only a good thing if you somehow think the Chinese government is an infallible good organization, whose word is synonymous with the word of God. 

Because that's the theology? A Roman catholics derives their beliefs from the church which uses tradition and scripture and various things within the church plus the pope. Unless Xi Jinping becomes the pontiff, they don't have to listen to him for their religious beliefs

So Chinese Catholic Church listens to Chinese state a good thing because? Your response is silly. But I’ll point something out. The Catholic religion is a bit different than most other religions. It’s essentially a sovereign state in and of itself. They own their own tiny little country called the Vatican City. The Pope is the leader of that country and all Catholic Churches belong to that country. This might as well be the same as one country entering another countries embassy and kicking them all out and replacing them with their own people but keeping the label of the original country as the embassy. Also Chinas fucken buck wild with religion. lol what they did to destroy the entirety of Tibetan Buddhism with the Panchen Lama incident. I’m not criticizing them so much as pointing it out as nonsensical and crazy. Personally destroy all religions, I’m down with that. Religion is a cancer in the world and always has been.

History rhymes but it doesn’t repeat. Not everything must be a mirror image in order to be a similarity.

You would be incorrect [https://catholicreview.org/russia-killing-clergy-banning-religions-in-occupied-ukraine-says-foreign-minister/](https://catholicreview.org/russia-killing-clergy-banning-religions-in-occupied-ukraine-says-foreign-minister/)