China Outlaws Online Preaching and Prayer: The Sinicisation of Faith and the Betrayal of the Underground Church
On 15 September 2025, the State Administration for Religious Affairs issued a new Code of Conduct for Religious Teachers and Personnel, immediately enforceable, which strikes a further blow against the freedom of worship in China. Comprising 18 articles, the regulations forbid priests and religious of every creed from preaching, praying, or instructing online. Digital distribution of religious texts, live streamed liturgies, online prayer meetings, and even private instruction of children in the faith through the internet are now illegal.
The New Restrictions in Detail
The code is comprehensive in its scope. Clergy may not livestream Mass, Dharma sessions, or worship of any kind, nor host or participate in digital prayer groups or Bible studies. Even short video messages of catechetical or devotional content are prohibited unless published through Party-approved platforms. Group prayer via video conferencing, chat groups, or other interactive digital media is strictly forbidden, criminalising one of the few ways underground Catholic communities have survived under surveillance.
Religious education of minors is singled out. Article 9 forbids clergy from “disseminating and instilling religious ideas to minors through the internet, inducing religious belief, or organising minors to participate in religious education.” This extends the ban already in place on children attending public worship, now silencing digital catechesis as well.
Digital distribution of Scripture, catechisms, encyclicals, or devotional texts is forbidden unless channelled through state-approved organisations. Even parish bulletins cannot be shared electronically. Clergy may not solicit donations or organise crowdfunding for religious purposes, cutting off financial independence. All permitted online religious content must demonstrate “love for the motherland, support for the leadership of the Communist Party of China, support for the socialist system,” and be aligned with the “core values of socialism.”
Perhaps most severe is the prohibition of “collusion with foreign forces.” In practice, this criminalises online communication with the Holy See, missionary congregations, or overseas seminaries. The restrictions apply not only in mainland China but also in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and extend to foreigners committing “online acts in China.” Enforcement will be carried out by national security, public security, telecommunications, and religious affairs authorities.
The cumulative effect is the near-total eradication of digital religious life. Underground Catholics, who relied on discreet messaging apps and livestreamed Masses, now face the loss of their last accessible space of freedom. Even state-registered clergy are muzzled unless they promote a Party-approved, Sinicised version of faith stripped of supernatural truth.
A Vatican Hand in the Crisis
This latest crackdown comes only a week after the Vatican retrospectively recognised the creation of a new Chinese diocese in Zhangjiakou, unilaterally established by Beijing. Instead of defending papal prerogatives, Rome acquiesced after the fact to the Party’s re-drawing of ecclesiastical boundaries. This capitulation follows the pattern of the 2018 provisional agreement, renewed in 2020 and 2022, under which Beijing has claimed decisive influence over episcopal appointments.
Rome argued that such compromises would bring “unity” between the underground Church and the Patriotic Catholic Association. Yet the opposite has occurred. Underground bishops loyal to Rome have been pressured into resignation, while Party-approved clergy are advanced. Instead of strengthening communion with the papacy, the deal has left faithful Catholics disillusioned, divided, and in many cases abandoned.
The Failure of the Vatican–CCP Deal
The Chinese government has offered nothing in return for these concessions. Persecution has only intensified: churches demolished, priests arrested, minors excluded from worship, and now digital prayer criminalised. Far from building trust, the Vatican’s compromises have emboldened Beijing to claim ever more control over religion. Rome’s silence on the new laws, if it continues, will confirm what many underground Catholics already believe: that they have been sacrificed for a diplomatic mirage.
It should not be forgotten that the Vatican–CCP deal was first engineered by the disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whose secret negotiations with Beijing in the early 2000s paved the way for the 2018 agreement. That such a morally compromised figure played a decisive role in brokering this arrangement only deepens the scandal: the underground faithful were delivered into the hands of their persecutors by a man later laicised for sexual abuse.
Among the voices raised against this trajectory, none has been clearer than Cardinal Joseph Zen, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong. From the outset, he condemned the deal as a “betrayal of Christ’s flock.” In January 2018, he travelled to Rome to plead with Pope Francis directly, warning that the agreement would “deliver the faithful into the hands of wolves.” The Pope granted him a brief audience but did not act on his warnings. In October 2020, Zen again flew to Rome to seek a meeting during the deal’s renewal; this time he was denied an audience altogether, despite remaining in the city for several days⁴. In public interviews, he repeatedly described the accord as a “sellout” and testified that underground bishops felt “abandoned and deceived”⁵. His counsel was ignored, his fidelity rewarded with silence. Today, the persecution he predicted has unfolded with relentless precision.
The Perennial Teaching of the Church
The Magisterium leaves no ambiguity about such systems. Leo XIII in Quod Apostolici Muneris (1878) described socialism and communism as a “plague… opposed to the natural law itself” which, if unchecked, would “utterly destroy the rights, property, and possessions of all men, and even society itself”¹. Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris (1937) declared: “Communism strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all trace of immortality”². Pius XII, addressing China directly in Ad Sinarum Gentem (1954), warned against the “false doctrine” of a national church severed from Rome: “The Mystical Body of Christ is not an association governed by merely human laws, but a divine society whose law is truth”³.
The new Chinese code embodies precisely what these popes condemned: the denial of man’s supernatural destiny, replaced by enforced conformity to the Party.
The Way of the Cross for the Faithful
The underground Church is again driven into the catacombs. Its priests and laity face the stark choice of betrayal or persecution. Yet history testifies that grace flourishes most when earthly powers attempt to extinguish it. The martyrs of China—from the 19th-century persecutions to the gulags of the 20th century—show that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church. Their witness now rebukes not only the oppressors but also the shepherds who compromise with them.
The Vatican–CCP accord thus proves not a bridge to communion, but a scandal to the faithful. It is a test of whether the Church truly believes her perennial teaching: that Christ alone is King, that His Vicar cannot barter away the rights of His flock, and that fidelity, not compromise, is the true path of evangelisation.
A Wider Crisis of Credibility
The fact that Theodore McCarrick, later laicised for grave sexual abuse, was entrusted as a Vatican envoy to Beijing in the early 2000s epitomises the moral and doctrinal collapse of the post–Vatican II Church. At the very moment when clarity, holiness, and apostolic courage were needed, the Holy See relied on a man whose corruption was already widely whispered. This is not merely a tragic irony: it symbolises the crisis of an ecclesial leadership that too often elevates diplomacy above doctrine, appearances above truth, and compromise above fidelity.
The Vatican’s China policy has thus become a parable of the wider malaise. The faithful see shepherds striking bargains with tyrants, while ignoring saints in their midst like Cardinal Zen. They see the successors of the Apostles accepting restrictions on worship and catechesis, while affirming “harmony” with regimes that hate Christ. And they ask: if Rome will not defend the freedom of her children in China, what assurance is there that she will defend the faith anywhere else?
Footnotes
- Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Muneris (28 December 1878), §1–2.
- Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris (19 March 1937), §10.
- Pius XII, Ad Sinarum Gentem (7 October 1954), §10.
- Catholic News Agency, “Cardinal Zen Denied Audience with Pope Francis in Rome,” October 2020.
- Cardinal Joseph Zen, interview with The New York Times, February 2018.
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